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PETER AND POLLY \ 


Home-Life in new England 


A HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 


MARIAN DOUGLAS. 










tj 



NT °p 

' No .IfflSL'* 



BOSTON: 

JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 

1876. 




Copyright, 1876. 

By JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO. 



University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 
Cambridge. 



PETER AND POLLY. 


CHAPTER I. 

I T was the autumn of 1775, and the pale 
sunlight of the Indian summer gave a 
yellow tinge to the dry russet leaves yet 
clinging to the boughs of the giant oak that 
overshadowed the old Austin homestead, a 
substantial dwelling-house in a pleasant village 
in Massachusetts. 

It was a hospitable, comfortable-seeming 
home, with two stories in front, and a “ lean-to” 
roof, reaching groundward, in the rear, while a 
queer, bird-house-like porch sheltered the front 
door, that now swung open, letting the wind 
blow in the withered leaves. The sitting- 


6 


PETER AND POLLY. 


room within was, as well, a cheery, home-like 
place, where a tall clock, with elaborate brass 
ornaments, stood in one corner, and, loudly 
ticking, told the flight of time ; and where, in 
the fireplace, set round with gayly painted tiles, 
after the Dutch fashion, a fire of green ash was 
burning, that filled the air with the faint fra- 
grance of its scented flames. 

The room was strewn with articles of wear- 
ing-apparel for all seasons,* while over the nar- 
row winding stairs that led to the chambers 
above, ascending and descending like the an- 
gels of Jacob’s ladder, little Peter and Polly 
Austin were constantly passing, busily making 
preparations for a long journey, and a lengthy 
stay with some unknown relatives in New 
Hampshire. 

They were twins, and had just reached the 
sweet years of indiscretion, being now thirteen, 
— an age for them the more perilous, because, 
having lost their mother by death the year 
previous, they had now been compelled to part 


PETER AND POLLY. 


7 


with their father, a young physician, who, hav- 
ing received a commission in the new Colonial 
Army, had, three days before, ridden away to 
report himself at Cambridge, bidding them 
“ go'od by ” with tearful eyes, not knowing 
when he should return. He had not left, 
however, without making every arrangement 
he deemed possible for the care of his chil- 
dren during his absence, a subject which had 
caused him great anxiety. A worthy middle- 
aged couple, who had lately come to the place 
from Charlestown, where, in the stirring days 
of June, their house had been burned by Brit- 
ish fire, and the man’s right hand been par- 
tially disabled by a random shot, had already 
found shelter under his roof, and were grateful 
to accept the care of his land and buildings 
while he should be away. But, though excel- 
lent persons in their place, they were scarcely 
those to whom the watchful father cared to 
intrust the guidance of his thoughtful son and 
of his daring little Polly ; and it was with a 


8 


PETER AND POLLY. 


sense of relief that he received an unexpected 
letter from his sister Nancy, who resided in a 
small but thrifty township in New Hampshire, 
saying that three men from her vicinity were 
shortly to be in his neighborhood on business, 
and “ if, as a patriot should, he intended to 
enter the army, she trusted he would allow his 
children to be sent, in their company, to her 
home, where, until his return, she would watch 
over them with all of a Christian’s faithfulness 
and all of a mother’s love.” 

“ Tut ! tut ! tut ! ” said Dr. Austin, on read- 
ing this epistle ; “ Nancy promises too much.” 
Yet, notwithstanding, his heart, always sensi- 
tive to kindness, warmed, as he read, toward 
the almost stranger sister whom he had only 
seen for a few brief times since her marriag?, 
when he was but a boy himself. He recalled, 
with brotherly pride, the many tributes to her 
beauty and grace to which he had listened, 
and remembering with pleasure that her hus- 
band, whom he had met but twice, had, on 


PETER AND POLLY. 


9 


those occasions, shown himself to have the 
manners of a gentleman, and that he was, 
moreover, spoken of by those that knew him 
better than himself as a person of character 
and position, as well as wealth, he gratefully 
concluded at once to accept the invitation, 
not even thinking, after the manner of parents 
of to-day, of consulting beforehand the wishes 
and opinions of two human fledglings of thir- 
teen. 

The three men foretold had in due time ap- 
peared, and, all excitement at the thought of 
going with them next morning, a new sense 
of self-consequence half consoling them for 
their father’s departure, Peter and Polly, this 
bright November afternoon, gathered together 
their trinkets and treasures, anxious to carry 
as many as possible away with them. 

“ But you must leave most of them behind,” 
forewarned Mrs. Ellis, the housekeeper from 
Charlestown ; “ all your luggage, big and lit- 
tle, you must get into those two bags.” And 


10 


PETER AND POLLY. 


she pointed to two long sacks, woven of coarse 
green and red yarn, with leather tops and bot- 
toms, which stood partially filled upon the 
floor. 

“ Peter won’t need,” said Polly, “ as much 
room for his things as I shall for mine. I must 
get in all my best clothes.” For Polly was, at 
this time, a practical negative answer to the 
prophet’s inquiry, “ Can a maid forget her or- 
naments ? ” “ There are my short gowns and 

my red stuffed petticoat, and my neckerchiefs, 
and my tuckers, and my best long gown, and — ” 

“ And what now ? ” broke forth Peter, in- 
dignantly interrupting his sister’s inventory. 
“ I suppose you think you can have the fill- 
ing of both bags yourself; but there are my 
Caesar and Virgil, and my Dictionary and 
Grammar, and my Introduction to the Mak- 
ing of Latin ! Father said they must be car- 
ried, and if Aunt Nancy knows a minister, or 
any other fit man, I shall be sent to him to be 
taught.” For, if Polly was vain of her girlish 


PETER AND POLLY. 


II 


finery, Peter was equally so of his reputation 
as a scholar, for his quickness in regard to 
books had already made his friends foresee for 
him college honors, and the then thrice-cov- 
eted laurels of a “ learned man ” ; while Polly, 
though a ready reader of anything akin to 
stories, of which, either written or told, she 
was passionately fond, was by no means in- 
clined to hard study. She was not even yet 
quite perfect in the Catechism ; her spelling 
was always original, and her “ pothooks ” were 
the most forlorn of their species, though much 
good paper and many goose-quills she had 
ruined in following the copies given her at 
the village “ reading and writing school.” 

“But those Latin books, and the sum-book, 
and the Psalter and the Catechism, and the 
Bible with the letter in it that we must give 
Cousin Keziah Hapgood, if she is living near 
Aunt Nancy, are all the books we can take ; 
so you may as well put those two * World 
Displayeds’ back on the shelf.” 


12 


PETER AND POLLY. 


“Yes, indeed!” confirmed Mrs. Ellis, au- 
thoritatively ; “ there is no room for them in 
the bags ; and, if there were, books are too 
costly things for you to be carrying round the 
country, and, ten to one, losing in the end. 
I ’ve heard your father say he paid twenty-six 
pounds for that set of books, and that ’s a great 
price to give for something you can’t eat, nor 
drink, nor wear. Put them up, Peter.” 

Peter obeyed promptly, like one who had 
learned to mind what he was told, and re- 
placed the books, with a sigh, in the small 
mahogany “buffet,” that contained what was 
then a valuable and expensive library. It 
was made up chiefly, after the fashion of the 
day, of those theological works and printed 
sermons which the children of the Puritans 
seemed to take such delight in perusing. Con- 
troversial statements regarding the “ Order of 
the Churches,” the “ Rise of Antinomianism,” 
and the “ New Light Ministry,” “ Election 
Sermons,” and, vastly different, “ Sermons on 


PETER AND POLLY. 


13 


Election,” mournful funeral discourses, and 
sentimental wedding ones, with a sweetness 
caught from Solomon’s Song, all were there ; 
but it was to the lowest of the small shelves 
of the buffet that Peter’s eyes turned with 
longing regret. There were gathered what 
he deemed his treasures ; a stout edition of 
Shakespeare, a well-worn “ Pilgrim’s Progress,” 
and a less prized “Paradise Lost,” which, after 
all, was not unvalued by the reflective lad, 
who had never owned a child’s or a young 
person’s book in his life, and who, shut in to 
them as he had been, for lack of other reading, 
had found in each of these volumes a voiceless 
friend, all the dearer because he realized that 
what was best in them lay just beyond his 
reach, and that to-morrow would give new 
meaning to what he had learned to-day. 
“ Midsummer Night’s Dream ” was, to Polly 
and himself, the most charming of fairy tales; 
“ Macbeth,” an unfailing source of delightful 
horrors as a ghost-story ; Milton’s warlike an- 


14 


PETER AND POLLY . 


gels, well-matched foes who fought bravely ; 
and Bunyan’s Pilgrim, as real an existence as 
the Pilgrim Fathers. But the “World Dis- 
played,” in twenty diminutive volumes, with 
brown covers, filled with pictures of scenes in 
foreign lands, was most precious of all. It 
was, as the title said, “ a curious collection of 
travels ” ; and Peter and Polly, who, in body, 
had scarcely been beyond their native town, 
had, in soul, with these old voyagers, been 
round and round the world, searching for 
Prester John, discovering the East Indies, 
setting up the cross of conquest on palmy 
isles, watching the glittering icebergs on the 
Arctic Sea, sitting in Hottentot huts, or roam- 
ing through gold-decked palaces. 

To leave these books behind, was to Peter 
a sore trial ; and as he replaced on the shelf 
the two volumes he had especially chosen to 
take with him, even Polly’s heart was softened 
by the sight of his disconsolate face. 

“ There is one comfort, Peter,” she said ; 


PETER AND POLLY. 


15 


“ there is no make-believe in our going to 
New Hampshire. We ’ve always wanted to 
travel, and I can’t help wishing, if we could 
get out of it safely, that we might meet a 
squad of British soldiers, or some roaming 
Indians, or a cross bear and some cubs, or 
anything of that kind, so as to have some 
adventures on the road.” 

“ You want to see cross bears ? ” said Peter, 
contemptuously. “You, who are afraid of 
your shadow ! ” 

“ O, yes, I ’m afraid at the time,” returned 
Polly, nothing daunted ; “ but dangers, when 
they are well over, are such charming things 
to talk about.” 

Next to having fine clothes, to be the hero- 
ine of hair-breadth escapes, was, just then, the 
dearest object of Polly’s ambition. “As for 
filling the bags,” she resumed — 

“ About that,” said Mrs. Ellis, “ there need 
be no disputing between you ; I will attend 
to the packing myself ; and, Polly, when you 


1 6 


PETER AND POLLY. 


are gone, I hope you will work on your sam- 
pler, and be sure and take your stitches even, 
so as not to have to do them over. There has 
been silk enough, now, picked out of it to 
make another good one, and it ’s a pity to 
waste materials in times like these.” 

Polly flushed ; her sampler was a sore sub- 
ject. She had commenced it with the thought 
that it would prove a marvel of its kind, as 
indeed it had. It was a long square of yellow- 
brown canvas, surrounded, on three sides, 
with a wreath where fruit and flowers and 
birds were mingled ; while underneath, trees, 
buildings, and beasts, such as “ never were 
by sea or shore,” were wrought in many- 
colored silks ; but, alas ! Polly, not content 
with regular patterns, had ventured to draw 
upon her imagination for designs, with most 
unsatisfactory results. Even the central verse, 
the only thing in which she had not sought to 
be original, for, with slight variations, it was 
the standard one of the time for the purpose, 


PETER AND POLLY. 


17 


“Polly Austin is my name, 

America my nation; 

Massachusetts is my State, 

And Christ is my Salvation,” 

was as sorry a specimen of needlework as of 
poetry. 

“ It was,” thought Polly, " exceedingly cruel 
in Mrs. Ellis to allude to this sampler before 
Peter ” ; whose brotherly comments on her 
fancy-work were wont to be more frank than 
agreeable ; so, starting up, “ If we are going 
to the graveyard, we may as well go now,” 
she said. 

The “ graveyard ” was a small, stone-walled 
enclosure, on one side of the “ meeting,” as the 
meeting-house itself was often called, treeless, 
except a growth of wild cherry along its edges, 
and one young elm, that waved over what 
Polly styled “ the black corner,” where the 
village negroes were buried. Many of the 
graves were unmarked ; but what stones there 
were, were rich . in epitaphs, from the long 


i8 


PETER AND POLLY. 


Latin inscription over the minister’s resting- 
place to the odd rhymes on the humbler head- 
stones of the flock. Without staying to read 
them again, Polly knew every verse there. 
She had spelled , them out Sunday noons in 
summer, when, between morning and after- 
noon services, she had rambled among the 
graves, and fed the brown sparrows with the 
crumbs of her luncheon. 

“ A Pious Soul, on wings of Love, 

And Feathers of an Holy Dove, 

He bid this weary world Adieu 
And wisely up to Heaven flew.” 

“ She was kind to all, She seemed contented, 

She lived beloved and Died lamented.” 

“ Reader 

Behold as you pass by 
as You are now Soe, 

Once was I as I am 
Now Soe You Must be 
Prepare for Death . 
and Follow me.”, 


It had never occurred to Polly that there 


PETER AND POLLY. 


19 


was anything in stanzas like these to awaken 
a smile. The graveyard was, to her, a very 
awful place, that still had a certain fascination 
that made her like to visit it, with her little 
schoolmates or with Peter; but nothing could 
have persuaded her to enter there alone. 

The ground all around the place was com- 
pletely covered by a close network of running 
blackberry-vines, still beautiful, and in many 
places green, after the sharp October frosts, 
but catching and clinging unmercifully as the 
children passed through them to the farther 
end, where their mother slept peacefully by 
two little Timothies and a small Miranda, in- 
fant children, whose resting-place was marked 
by three small black stones, adorned by 
curiously carved and exceedingly ill-visaged 
cherubs. Polly stooped down and laid her 
hand, as if for “farewell,” tenderly upon her 
mother’s grave, while Peter stood by in true 
awkward boy -fashion, feeling that a last visit 
to such a place was a time when it would be 


20 


PETER AND POLLY. 


proper to do or say something, and not know- 
ing what. 

“ Polly ! ” he said at last, taking out of his 
breeches-pocket a carefully folded square of 
paper, “ I think here would be a good place 
to read this over again.” 

He found, near by, a little space of grass free 
from the thorny vines, and the two children 
sat down, their arms around each other, to 
read together their father’s farewell letter. 

My dear Children: As, by the Providence 
of God and the Need of my Country, I am Now 
called to Part with You for a Season, I leave be- 
hind a few Words of Counsel, that, when I am 
Away, may serve to remind You Both of your 
Father and your Duty. You are now going to 
Reside for the Present in what is to you a Strange 
Place, and where I have No Friends to whose Care 
I can Commend you, save my Sister and Her 
Husband, unless it may Prove so that Miss Keziah 
Hapgood, that Excellent Cousin of your Mother, 
and Doubly Dear for Her Sake, may still be 


PETER AND POLLY. 


21 


living somewhere in the neighborhood of your 
Aunt. 

As you will, therefore, be thrown among Stran- 
_ gers, I Hope that your Conduct will be Discreet 
even beyond Your Years. Let Your Behaviour to 
your Elders be marked by Docility, Reverence, and 
Obedience to Instruction. In company, Avoid 
alike a Pert and Forward Demeanor and a Sul- 
len, Silent one. Be Emulous without Envy, Kind 
without Servility, and by Patience, Forbearance, 
and Truthfulness, merit the Reward of an approv- 
ing Conscience, however the World may Regard 
you. 

As Concerns the Cultivation and Improvement 
of your Minds, I have written to your Uncle to 
Procure, for Peter, a Master in Latin and Greek, 
that He may be properly fitted for College, and 
to give Polly as good Schooling as lies in his 
Power to Bestow ; but, as I fear that, at Present, 
you will have few Opportunities for Reading, 
therefore I trust you will the more Carefully peruse 
whatever Good Books you may be able to Obtain 
and think over Attentively what You have Read, 


22 


PETER AND POLLY. 


so if not Able to Learn all I could wish, You will 
be constantly Adding something to your Store of 
Knowledge. 

Finally, never Forget your Mother’s Counsels, 
nor Cease to give Good Attention to Reading the 
Bible and to Prayer, for, without God’s Blessing, 
we can never be Happy in this World or Reign in 
the Next. 

Whether it may be the Design of an All-Wise 
Providence to Return me to You again, or wheth- 
er, for the Last Time, I have Looked upon You, 
May you ever Remember me with True Affection, 
Knowing my Highest Wish is for your Prosperity, 
and my constant Prayer that you may be Useful 
on Earth and Blessed in Eternitie. 

Your loving Father, 

Peter Austin. 

Polly took out her blue-bordered handker- 
chief and wiped her eyes ; she was not 
ashamed to have even Peter see her tears, 
they seemed so poor a tribute of her sorrow 
for her fathers absence. “ If she could only 




. 

E TER AND POLLY. 23 


± 


see him,” she thought, “ and tell him how- 
much she loved him, and how good and faith- 
ful she meant to be.” 

She rose, and as she did so Peter laid his 
hand gently upon her arm. “There is one 
thing, Polly ! ” he said, “ that I have been 
thinking about, and that is, you and I have 
got to be all the family of us there is, now, 
and if you will stick by me, I will stick by 
you ; won’t you, Polly ? ” 

“Stick by you?” said Polly; “yes, Peter, 
through thick and thin, whatever comes ! — 
but, don’t you think we should be happier if 
we did n’t tease each other quite so much ; if 
I should give up calling you 'Book-worm/ 
and you should have a little less to say about 
my clothes ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Peter, “ we should : I don’t like 
teasing any better than you do ; but, about 
your clothes, you ar'e too riggish, Polly.” 

“ Well, if I ’m riggish, you ’re priggish,” 
retorted Polly. “ If I were a boy, I would n’t 


24 


PETER AND POLLY. 


sit down with my cue half braided, and my 
nose in an old Latin book, as you will.” 

Just then a magnificent golden flicker, 
lingering when his mates were flown, lighted 
on one of the cherry-trees near, and watching 
the gleam of his wings the children forgot 
the dispute fast arising out of their resolutions 
to be peaceful and considerate. 




CHAPTER II. 

U P in the morning, fluttering and twit- 
tering like a swallow making ready 
for flight, was Polly, before the cocks had 
begun to crow or the stars grow dim by the 
pale light of the pretty green candle colored 
with bay berry-wax, making herself fine before 
the little looking-glass, quite as anxious as to 
her appearance as would become a bride on 
her wedding morning ; for “ to-day,” thought 
Polly, “my path will take a new turn.” 

Good or ill, dark or bright, an untried ex- 
istence lay before her. Far away in more 
newly settled New Hampshire, who knew what 
strange adventures might befall her ? Her 
head was full of Indian stories, which made 


26 


PETER AND POLLY. 


up half of the old women’s talk in those days, 
and all she knew of the locality to which 
she was going was, that it was a township 
not far from the place where, some seventy- 
eight years before, the lion-hearted Mrs. 
Dustin had fled from her tormentors, with 
a string of Indian scalps. That was long, 
long before, and tomahawks were not to Polly’s 
taste ; but she had also listened breathless to 
the story of the fair Mrs. Howe, the “ beau- 
tiful captive ” who, only twenty years before, 
had been carried from Hinsdale, New Hamp- 
shire, and sold to the French in Canada ; 
and of a little Rachel Meloon, who had been 
borne away from Salisbury, and, after dwell- 
ing nine years with the savages in their wig- 
wams, had been brought back to her friends, 
an Indian at heart, singing their songs and 
speaking their tongue, and sorrowing, wher- 
ever she went, for her dusky friends of the 
forest. Reckless Polly, looking in the mirror 
at the earnest, glowing little face it showed, 


PETER AND POLLY. 


27 


felt, as she had said, that “if she and Peter 
only came safely through, she was quite ready 
for anything” ; the more excitement the bet- 
ter ; for she had quite as wild a love for 
adventure as if she had been brought up on 
dime novels instead of the “Assembly’s Cate- 
chism.” 

“If anything should happen,” thought Polly, 
“it is a good thing to be looking your best; 
then if people get into trouble they have 
something to help themselves out.” 

She stooped just then to buckle her shoe. 
Certainly, her feet were something to be proud 
of, so slender and shapely, with such finely 
turned ankles, such daintily arched insteps ; 
“ it was quite a pleasure to look at them,” 
Polly thought ; and, if any one knew, she 
ought, for she had often taken pleasure in 
mounting a high chair for the sake of a peep 
at them, in the little bedroom mirror. But 
this morning she was less satisfied with their 
looks than she was wont, for the stockings 


28 


PETER AND POLLY. 


which Mrs. Ellis had laid by for her to put 
on were of gray woollen yarn, not the finest, 
and now that they were on, she saw that the 
legs were too large, and “bagged” about the 
ankles. This was an affliction indeed. Polly 
caught just that instant a glimpse of a little 
pair of white silk stockings with lovely clocks, 
which lay in the unclosed top of one of the 
bags. She looked at them with longing eyes. 
“ The soul that hesitates is lost.” “ There is 
plenty of time, and no harm in just trying 
them on,” she thought ; and drawing them up 
very straightly with her garters close tied, 
they looked even prettier than she had ex- 
pected when she pulled off the others; so much 
so, that she could not help rolling up the gray 
woollen ones in a ball, and stuffing them as 
far as she could beneath the other contents 
of the bag. When she had done this, had it 
not been for a certain restless pricking of her 
conscience, she would have felt quite satisfied, 
the rest of the clothes provided for her to ride 


PETER AND POLLY. 


2 9 


in being, in truth, quite too good for the oc- 
casion ; for Mrs. Ellis, who, since her coming 
to the house, had taken charge of her ward- 
robe, had shared fully in her love of dress, — 
perhaps, indeed, was the chief cause of it by 
her injudicious conversation. She, in her 
maiden days, had been a seamstress in great 
Boston, and all her talk now was of the men 
and women of fashion she had seen in the 
fine houses there: bewitching gallants dressed, 
for great dinners, in peach-blossom velvet 
trimmed with silver-lace ; matrons with plumed 
heads, like crested cockatoos ; and fair young 
maidens, in “ raiment of wrought needlework,” 
with love-locks on their foreheads and roses 
on their breasts. 

Dr. Austin was free-hearted and indulgent, 
and Mrs. Ellis, in assuming the care of Polly’s 
outfit, had made it, for “a growing girl,” al- 
most an extravagant one. The gown the lit- 
tle girl was to wear to-day was of imported 
worsted damask, re-dyed black for Polly to 


30 


PETER AND POLLY. 


wear as mourning for her mother ; but her 
cloak, which had been made with a thought 
of long-continued future use, was of scarlet 
broadcloth trimmed with sable fur, and her 
best gown, also of worsted damask, was blue 
and white, and flowered with red. 

“Very fine indeed,” Polly thought, and cal- 
culated to make an impression on all behold- 
ers. Even her ambition, in regard to her pro- 
spective appearance, was satisfied as to her 
clothes. Polly’s careless spirits, however, all 
vanished, when, just as her toilet was com- 
pleted, she clasped around her throat the little 
mourning-necklace which her father had given 
her, according to the custom of the time, at her 
mother’s funeral. The memento, thoughtlessly 
worn till then, now that she was to leave all 
the scenes with which she was familiar, brought 
back to her thought so many tender memo- 
ries, that the quick tears sprang at once to 
her blue eyes. She was fairly sobbing when 
Mrs. Ellis opened the door. “ What ! home- 


PETER AND POLLY. 


31 


sick before you start ? That will never do ! ” 
she said ; “ keep up your spirits ; • you have 
a long journey before you, and, if you get 
hungry, you can eat, as you ride, one of the 
honey-cakes I shall put in your pocket.” 

The three men who were to bear the twins 
away rode up to the door in good season, 
mounted and ready to depart. Before they 
came, Polly had tried to give her thoughts of 
them a romantic coloring ; but Peter had said, 
“ They must be three cowardly loons, else 
they would not have come all the way from 
New Hampshire with no thought of joining 
the army.” 

When she came to start, Polly found, to her 
dismay, that Peter was to “sit double” with 
the youngest and handsomest rider, and the 
owner of the best horse, and was to keep in 
advance of the rest of the party ; the next 
most attractive stranger, as far as she could 
discern, in the gray light, for it was scarcely 
morning when they came, was to ride with the 


32 


PETER AND POLLY. 


saddle-bags ; while she, of course, fell to the 
last of the three, and was to sit on a pillion 
behind him. 

It was not a pretty pillion. Almost dark as 
it was, Polly could see the feathers, with which 
it w'as stuffed, looking out through its worn 
covering. It was an old bony horse, and the 
rider was worst of all. Polly’s vain little heart 
failed her as Mr. Ellis lifted her to the seat 
behind him. “ Good by ! and don’t let Peter 
spoil his satin breeches,” called Mrs. Ellis ; and 
that was her last farewell. 

Polly waved one hand, while with the other 
she clung to the man in front, and the tears 
ran down her cheeks. The growing day, that 
showed her companion more plainly, did not, 
alas ! lend him attractions, — a man of fifty, 
wrinkled, cross-eyed, and ill shaven ; his hair 
combed back and braided in a cue, tied round 
with a piece of eel-skin and plentifully pow- 
dered, which was his only attention to dress 
as a fine art ; his coat, of poorly woven home- 


PETER AND POLLY. 


33 


spun, badly cut and worse made ; his breeches 
and long waistcoat of buckskin, old and black- 
ened in places ; his cocked hat, which had 
seen hard service, much the worse for wear ; 
while, sure signs of a sloven, there were marks 
of candle-drippings on his sleeve, sprinklings 
of hair-powder on his shoulders, and scatter- 
ings of snuff on the dingy ruffle of his shirt. 

Polly, who was not accustomed to “judging 
righteous judgment,” but to rating people by 
outside show, was more and more prejudiced 
against him as they jogged along ; for in ad- 
dition to his untidy looks, he paid no more 
attention to her than if she had been a sack 
of meal laid on behind him. 

Why should he ? One little girl was not 
of much account to him. He was the father 
of fourteen children, and, though the eldest of 
them were now grown, by a second marriage 
to a widow with five he had made his house 
so full of little folks, that, when he had a 
chance to be quiet, he was glad enough to 


34 


PETER AND POLLY. 


embrace it. In truth, his heart to-day was too 
heavy to say much. Mr. Burbean, for that 
was his name, was not of the stuff that pa- 
triots are made of, and the call of Freedom 
woke in him no very ardent response. But he 
was an honest, well-meaning man, and a kind 
father and husband, and he knew what war 
was better than Polly did. By and by he 
began to mutter to himself, quite unconscious 
of a listener. “ There’s a hard time coming, 
there’s a hard time coming,” he repeated. 
“ Breadstuffs will be high, and cattle will/be 

t 

scarce, and the border Injuns will be all 
hawkin’ round, and the paper-money — Little 
girl ! ” he said, suddenly remembering her, and 
turning round so quickly that Polly was nearly 
startled off her seat, — “ little girl ! do you 
know how long your father thinks this war is 
going to last ? ” 

“ No, sir, I do not,” replied Polly, respect- 
fully ; “ but I heard him say, last summer, 
General Washington thought it would be over 


PETER AND POLLY. 


35 


pretty soon, and he should eat his Christmas 
dinner at home in Virginia.” 

“ Christmas ? ” said Mr. Burbean, “ that 
comes in December, don’t it ? We don’t 
make any account of it in our region. It ’s 
a kind of a Popish day, anyhow.” 

“ I guess father don’t expect there will be 
any peace at present. ' He said he thought he 
' might be gone a long time,” said Polly, al- 
most with a sob at the thought. 

“ I guess sfoe don’t ! I see your father once, 
an^he looked like a man of sense,” responded 
Mr. Atrbean. 

“ He is a man of sense,” confirmed Polly, 
her heart warming for the first time towards 
her companion. Then they rode on again in 
silence. The road was rough, for there had 
been a great rain the month before, a wild 
storm, when in the White Mountains a new 
river had broken forth, and the channel of 
the Saco had been divided in its midst. 
Here and there the road was badly gullied, 


3 ^ 


PETER AND POLLY. 


and, as the old horse was given to stumbling, 
Polly, on her pillion, had a constant thought 
as to what might become of her. On, on 
they went, now coming to some small village, 
where every man they saw had some question 
to ask, as to “ how things looked where they 
had been,” and “ what was the news from 
the army.” To all inquiries Mr. Burbean 
replied, in the same words he had muttered 
to himself, “ There ’s a hard time coming. 
Breadstuffs will be high, and cattle will be 
scarce, and the border Injuns will be hawkin’ 
round, and the paper-money won’t be worth 
a crop of fire -weed. As for the army, some 
said it was a little easier now, but they’d been 
short for food and clothing and rum ; some 
of the soldiers’ time was up, and a good 
many of ’em were gitting discouraged.” 

“ Well, well,” was the cheering answer of 
more than one individual, “ there are better 
times coming. Benedict Arnold is up in the 
North, and when he is in motion we are sure 


PETER AND POLLY. 


37 


of good news.” “ He ought,” said one young 
man, whom they found sitting on a rock by 
the way, and polishing an old Queen Anne 
musket, “to have been in Washingtons place. 
He’s the man for the day.” 

“ Well, no,” said Mr. Burbean, shaking his 
head ; “ he ’s a brave man, Arnold is, but he 
ain’t a prudent one. In the dark one needs 
prudence, and there ’s a hard time coming, — 
a hard time coming.” 

This dreary prophecy, often repeated, 
weighed down poor Polly’s heart ; it seemed 
in unison with the gloomy November wind 
that wailed through the naked trees with the 
voice of coming winter ; but, as she rode on, 
all other feelings were soon lost in a sense 
of physical discomfort. Her shoulders were 
well protected by her red cloak, but, in order 
to shield it from being spattered with mud, 
Mrs. Ellis had pinned it up all around, and 
covered it with a brown, home-made shawl. 
The air was sharp and keen, and her limbs, 


33 


PETER AND POLLY. 


covered with the thin silk stockings, grew 
colder and colder, till a chill ran over her, 
and she shivered so she could scarcely cling 
to her companion, though, on that stumbling 
horse, she dared not loosen her hold upon 
him for an instant. When she had left her 
home, she felt glad that, in the dim morning 
light, Mrs. Ellis had not noticed how her feet 
were dressed ; now, she was half sorry that 
her folly had not been discovered, and she 
compelled to wear something warmer. On, 
on they went. “No haste, no rest,” was Mr. 
Burbean’s motto as well as Goethe’s. Peter 
and his companion, on a dashing steed, quite 
a marvel in those days, when, often ill-bro- 
ken and commonly overworked, the farmers’ 
horses were a sorry set, were far in advance 
of them. Seth Brown, with the saddle-bags, 
though better mounted than they, was gen- 
erally some distance in the rear, owing to his 
disposition to stop at nearly every farm-house 
for a little talk and a drink of cider. Slowly 


PETER AND POLLY. 


39 


forward the old white horse plodded on : now 
up some rocky hillside, shaded with white-oak 
from which the autumn wind had not yet 
stripped the dry and withered leaves; now 
through a '‘valley of dry bones,” where some 
makeshift settler had sought to make a forest- 
clearing by girdling the trees, and where, dead 
and decaying, the tall trunks were falling down 
against each other, and the ground was strewn 
with dry and broken branches ; and now 
through the solemn temples of the tall pines, 
where, “no feller having come up against 
them,” the great trees rose from a hundred 
and fifty to two hundred feet, upon either side 
the road, and where, far above, the low mur- 
mur of their boughs seemed to Polly like a 
voice from a world unknown. The king’s 
mark, “G. R.,” was cut deeply in the bark of 
the tallest and finest of them. They were not 
common trees in the region where she had 
lived, but Polly had heard of them often, “his 
Majesty’s pines,” that were the property of 


40 


PETER AND POLLY. 


the crown, and which no one could cut, 
even if owning the land on which they grew, 
without incurring a heavy fine. Here and 
there the road took a strange turn, which 
had probably been given it by the men who 
laid it out, years before, so as to take advan- 
tage of the beaver-dams, which were safe and 
convenient crossings of the running streams, 
thus saving, at first, the expense of making 
bridges. Now, the way lay beside a small 
pond, and the freezing wind, blowing across 
the water, beat against poor Polly pitilessly. 
But at last they came out into a clear place, 
and were climbing a steep hillside, when Mr. 
Burbean, looking up at the sky, vouchsafed 
another remark. “Little girl,” he said, “you’re 
used to a clock, ain’t you ? ” 

“Yes, sir, I am,” replied Polly. 

“ Well, I ain’t,” he returned ; “ I don’t know 
anything about luxuries, but I can tell when 
noon comes as well as anybody. It ’s ’most 
here now, and at the next house I ’ll stop and 
get dinner.” 


PETER AND POLLY. 


41 


“And warm ourselves,” Polly added, her 
teeth chattering, and her feet and limbs be- 
numbed in her silk stockings. 

The next house proved to be a comfortable 
log-dwelling, surrounded with fields, several 
of them black from being burnt over, the May 
before, to rid them of the troublesome trees. 
A herd of swine were scampering in and out 
of an enclosed piece of oak wood, on one side 
of the road, and a shock-headed child was 
amusing himself by shouting to them and 
pelting them with sticks. Inside of the house 
there was a good-sized room, lighted by two 
diminutive windows, with four small panes of 
glass in each, while a square opening over- 
head led, by means of a ladder, to a dark loft 
above. A young woman with two children 
clinging to her was cutting pumpkin in strips 
to dry ; and a brisk old dame, her gray hair 
drawn straight back without a cap, dressed in 
coarse butternut-colored cloth, with a pair of 
rough home-made moccasins on her feet, met 


42 


PETER AND POLLY. 


the travellers at the door, as they rode up, 
saying “her men-folks were away, making 
cider, but she would give them for dinner as 
good as she had herself, and that was baked 
pumpkin and milk.” 

Mr. Burbean ate his from the shell, but 
Polly’s was served up to her in a wooden 
bowl. It was good enough, but she was too 
cold to eat. She drew a small stool to the 
fireplace and crouched down as near to the 
blaze as possible. The children and young 
woman stared at her, full of curiosity ; while 
the old grandmother surveyed her with that 
look of contempt with which the hard-working, 
hard-faring new settlers were wont to regard 
anything that seemed like an approach to the 
effeminacy of fashionable life. 

“You cold?” she asked, at length, indiffer- 
ently. 

“Yes, madam, my feet are,” said Polly, for 
they really ached. 

“ I should think so,” said the old woman ; 


PETER AND POLLY. 


43 


“ those silk stockings look more nice than 
wise.” 

The rough truth of the speech cut . Polly to 
the quick. The tears came, and in a minute 
more she was sobbing. Mr. Burbean, with his 
mouth full of pumpkin, heard the sound, and 
felt called on to explain. 

“Her mother’s died, and her father’s gone 
into the army ; that ’s what ’s the matter of 
her,” he said. 

“Gone into the army?” asked the woman, 
her wrinkled face losing its hardness in an in- 
stant. “ Well, I would n’t cry any more, if I 
was you,” she said, turning to Polly ; “ it won’t 
do him any good, and I ’ll get you some old 
stockings to draw on your legs, and keep ’em 
warm. — And what ’s the news from the war ? ” 
she asked Mr. Burbean. 

“ Dark,” tvas the reply. “ There ’s a hard 
time coming. Breadstuff's will be high, and — ” 

“Hard times! and what’s that to scare 
me ? ” asked the old woman, her eye flashing, 


44 


PETER AND POLLY. 


and the color coming into her face ; “ have I 
lived so easy that I should be frightened by 
’em ? Hard times ! My father and mother 
fit with the Injuns before I was born, and I 
myself, when I was four years old, see my 
Uncle John lying dead with his scalp off ; and 
me and my husband, hain’t we warred for 
everything we’ve had? We’ve fit for our 
sheep with the wolves, and our pigs with the 
bears, and our geese with the foxes, and our 
chickens with the skunks, and we’ve cut the 
trees, and burnt the brush, and dug, and hoed, 
and fit with the land for all the crops we ’ve 
raised. If you want anything, you ’ve got to 
strike for it, and I ain’t the kind that wants to 
lie down, and have them Britishers step on us, 
as if we were caterpillars. I hain’t forgotten 
about them Connecticut River grants. There ’s 
been some queer works here in New Hamp- 
shire. Hard times ! I ’m willing to have ’em, 
if some of them old wigs in Porchmouth only 
can be brought down where they belong ! ” 


PETER AND POLLY. 


45 


“ Well, we ’ll hope all will prove for the 
best,” said Mr. Burbean, fidgeting round on 
his leather-bottomed chair. He had the inter- 
ests of his fourteen children, to say nothing 
of his second wife’s little brood, to think about, 
and the vision of outside troubles was, to him, 
doubly perplexing. 

The old woman, having expressed her mind, 
now climbed up the ladder into the loft, and 
came down with a pair of long stockings dyed 
yellow with onion-skins. The feet were nearly 
worn out, and the legs were full of holes, but, 
“ if keeping warm is what you want, they will 
answer for you,” she said to Polly. 

Polly had been too nearly frozen to be vain, 
and, humbly thanking the giver, she meekly 
drew them on, putting them over shoes, buck- 
les, and all, as, between their large size and 
the holes in them, it was easy to do. 

The hostess would take no pay for their 
dinner from Mr. Burbean ; but Polly wished to 
seem grateful, and presented the children with 


46 


PETER AND POLLY. 


all the cakes that Mrs. Ellis had stowed away 
in the pretty patchwork pocket tied on under 
her gown, to say nothing of a yard of red 
shoe-binding she gave to the young woman. 

The afternoon ride was much like the 
morning’s, through pine woods and oak, past 
meadows and clearings, over shaky bridges, 
up steep hills, into lonesome valleys ; almost 
the same, only Polly was vastly more com- 
fortable, or would have been, had she not 
found that, since through excitement she had 
almost forgotten to eat her breakfast before 
starting, and since at noon she had felt too 
chilled and sad to touch her baked pumpkin, 
and since her honey-cakes were given away, 
she was quite without food and exceedingly 
hungry. “ O, so hungry ! ” she thought, and 
remembered numerous half-starved voyagers 
she had read about in the “ World Dis- 
played.” The old horse was coming down a 
long hill, when Mr. Burbean stopped and 
pointed to a house a little way beyond. 


PETER AND POLLY. 


47 


“There’s the Winsley Tavern; we shall stop 
there to-night,” he said. Just then they heard 
a sound behind, and Seth Brown with the 
saddle-bags rode past. “ I ’ll be at Winsley’s 
first,” he called, and waved his hat. 

It was a cheery-looking place to Polly, in the 
rosy light of the November sunset, now burn- 
ing in the west. “ Here, at last,” she thought, 
“ I shall find both fire and supper.” It was a 
large house built against the side of a hill, so 
that the barn, stables, and cart-houses were 
all on a level with its chambers, the bar-room 
being on the second story, yet having a ground- 
entrance. A tall staff, on one side, swung 
aloft the sign-board, which bore upon it a new 
device, “The Liberty Tree,” painted in bright- 
est green. It was a busy time of year, and 
even Polly, with her inexperienced eyes, saw 
at once the house must be full of company. 
Well-dressed and ill-dressed, in broadcloth and 
homespun, buckskin breeches and rawhide 
leggins, all were there, and, waiting her arrival, 


48 


PETER AND POLLY. 


close by the immense horse-block, was Peter, 
his face aglow with delight. 

“ O Polly ! ” he asked, as he helped her to 
alight, “ did you ever have so good a ride ? ” 
But just then looking down, “ What ’s this ? ” 
he asked ; “ you, you, of all girls, Polly Aus- 
tin ! how came you to have those horrid 
yellow rags on your feet ? Come in, come 
into the house, as quickly as you can, and 
don’t let anybody see you!” 

Poor Polly, completely humiliated, slunk 
after him, and he led the way down through 
a side door, where he thought they would be 
unobserved ; for Peter had reached the house 
some time before, and, boy like, already felt 
acquainted there. 

Polly, the first instant she could, twitched 
off the yellow stockings and revealed the 
offending silk ones beneath. 

“Well, Polly, if you are not a fool, there 
never was one ! ” was Peter’s plain-spoken 
remark on seeing them. 


PETER AND POLLY. 


49 


“But that’s a monstrous wicked speech to 
make, if I was,” retorted Polly, sharply, never 
slow in her own defence. 

But O, the supper they had, when supper 
came! broiled pigeons and cream toast! What 
delicious fare it seemed to poor half-starved 
Polly ! while Peter, sitting by, stopped eating 
every now and then, to tell about his ride, 
which had been as gay as his sister’s had been 
dull ; for the person that he rode with, instead 
of “a cowardly loon,” had proved to be a 
“most wonderful, companionable man,” en- 
tertaining him with wild tales of the French 
War, and of Indian hunters, that had been 
“as good as a book,” he said. 

“ That is the best praise yoii can give,” 
said Polly ; “ but there are things in the 
world / like better than books ; lovely gen- 
teel people to talk with, and beautiful things 
to see, and merry times and romantic adven- 
tures, all of one’s own ! ” And Polly sighed, 
and helped herself to pigeon for the third time. 



CHAPTER III. 

I T was gratifying to the young people, next 
morning, to find that they were to stay 
over the day at the tavern. Peter’s compan- 
ion had business in the neighborhood. Mr. 
Burbean, well paid beforehand for his charge, 
saw that Polly, though used to horseback rid- 
ing, from jogging round with her father, on 
his visits to his patients, was not strong 
enough for journeying two days in succession ; 
and Seth Brown, stirring up great mugs of 
flip in the bar-room, was only too glad to 
make an excuse for stopping, by saying, he 
thought it best the saddle-bags should not 
go on before their owners. 

Peter and Polly had such fresh young eyes, 


PETER AND POLLY. 


51 


so eager to see, and finding so much of in- 
terest in everything they saw, that it is possi- 
ble they looked about the premises quite as 
much as was proper ; for, except the chambers, 
there was scarcely a room into which they did 
not peer. Peter led the way, and Polly, who 
felt a cold coming on, and whose limbs were 
stiff, but whose spirit was as willing as her 
flesh was weak, hobbled after, wherever he 
went. They put their heads into the great 
kitchen, where, out of the big chimney oven 
so large that a child of ten could have gone 
into it, a red-faced cook was taking huge iron 
pots of smoking baked beans ; into the parlor, 
with its sanded floor, its fine looking-glass, 
and its bright, glowing fireplace, holding 
wood six feet long, to which Polly was always 
coming back, and fluttering about like a moth 
around a candle, warming her chilly, silken- 
dressed feet ; into the little room where a 
barber was dressing over a short white wig, 
with curling-irons, and a half-dozen men sat 


52 


PETER AND POLLY. 


by, each wishing to be the first to have his 
cue re-braided and his face clean shaved, for 
the barber was a busy man in those beardless 
days ; into the entry of the bar-room, filled 
with the odor of tobacco-smoke and toddy, 
and of the loud sound of oaths from some 
men quarrelling over a game of cards, the 
first real profanity that Polly, brought up in a 
Puritan town, where the laws against it had 
not yet spent their force, had ever heard. 
As for the bar-room itself, where there was 
the usual display of jugs and mugs and tank- 
ards and runlets and flowing bowls, in spite 
of the recent great rise in the cost of spirits, 
only Peter had a glimpse of it ; for, as he said, 
“ it was no place for a girl to look into.” 

“ Nor for you, either, where they take the 
name of God in vain,” said Polly, solemnly 
shaking her head. 

But when Peter, anxious to extend his 
observations further, went out ‘into the wide 
stable-yard, Polly put on her shawl and 


PETER AND POLLY. 


53 


daringly followed after. There stood a half- 
dozen great carts, from which the oxen had 
been taken to rest and be fed. Two or three 
of them were filled with new spinning-wheels, 
held firmly in their places by bags of wool, 
perhaps the property of some enterprising 
manufacturer. A sunburnt hostler, lazy and 
slow-motioned, and ready to have a word 
with any one, was unloading a clumsy vehicle 
in one corner. 

“ If you will look under that shed you ’ll 
find something mebbe you . hain’t seen be- 
fore ! ” he called to Peter, as he came by. 
“ It ’s a chaise ; once in a while one stops 
here, but not often ; a cart with two tongues, 
my little brother Peleg calls it, and a good 
many folks round here never see one.” 

“ Never saw one ! ” said Polly, with a slight- 
ly contemptuous accent. “ Chaises are very 
common things where I came from ; I have 
often ridden in them myself.” And with a 
glance in the direction indicated, but without 


54 


PETER AND POLLY. 


stopping to examine the wonder, she drew 
her shawl closer, and, leaving Peter behind, 
hurried into the house, glad to get in from 
the bleak outdoor air, and to warm her feet 
by the fireplace. 

Sitting on a long settle on the. side of the 
room were two men ; the one, a ruddy, blue- 
eyed fellow, in a teamster’s striped frock and 
long leggins and coarsely made shoes, with- 
out buckles, who sat playing with an ox- 
goad and talking with the other, an older 
man, with a droll little white wig, and a com- 
plete suit of coarse brown homespun. 

“ Very common people in very common 
clothes,” was Polly’s comment. She wished 
the great magnates who had come in the 
chaise — a handsome man in fine broadcloth, 
and his wife in a silk dress, with muffled 
sleeves fastened by glittering buttons — would 
only stay where she could take notice of 
them. But as there was nothing else to do, 
Polly listened to what the two men were 
saying. 


PETER AND POLLY. 


55 


“ List ! ” said the younger man ; “ I habit ; 
but if the war holds out I shall ; and when 
I go into the army I sha’ n’t come back till 
it ’s over. There were some young blades 
I knew, all in a hurry to be off as soon as 
they heard of Lexington ; and now that the 
rations are cut down, and they find that sol- 
diering is hard work and poor pay, they are 
grumbling to get home again. ‘ Fighting and 
fifing are two things,’ as John Millin used to 
say.” 

“Ah, what’s become of John?” asked the 
elder. “ I remember seeing him when he 
first came up from Portsmouth, just married, 
dressed in scarlet and gold-lace, and his wife 
as pretty as a picture, with eyes like two 
stars.” 

“ They were dull enough before she died,” 
said the younger man, — “ faded with tears ; 
John and she are both gone, and their last 
days were full of trouble that all came from 
getting in debt.” 


56 


PETER AND POLLY. 


“ Ah, that ’s bad ! How so ? ” asked the 
other. “ His father was a rich man, — ships 
going and coming, a troop of black servants, 
and a table covered with silver.” 

“John had too much money when he was 
young, and was too venturesome in using it,” 
said the first speaker. “ As soon as he was 
heir to the property, he married and came up 
to this part of the country to lay out new 
townships. He had an idea that money would 
grow on new lands as pigeon-plants spring up 
on a clearing. But Pine Abel, — you know 
who he is, — ’t was a name he got when he 
had a mast contract, and made a good thing 
for himself looking after the king’s woods, — 
he was too sharp for John. He joined with 
him in buying and selling lands, but it some- 
how happened, whatever way things went, 
the gains were always Abel’s and the losses 
John’s. By and by a ship went down, on its 
way to England, that John Millin partly 
owned, as well as half its cargo of timber 


PETER AND POLLY. 


57 


and spars ; and then he got into a lawsuit 
about some Connecticut River grants he was 
concerned about ; and, first one thing and 
then another, his property all seemed to go 
like dew before the sun. He was in debt, 
and his land went here and his money there 
to pay his creditors. Old Justice Cram took 
his house and part of the furniture, but Pine 
Abel was the hardest of all. He took his 
cattle and his clothes and his bedding, his 
watch and his knee-buckles, and his wife’s 
gold beads ; and as things grew worse and 
worse, and John grew poorer and poorer, he 
kept sending the sheriff till there was noth- 
ing left to lay hands on. He took their and- 
irons out of the fireplace, and the brass 
kettle, and their last knife and fork ; and, 
when there was n’t anything else, a bag of 
wheat that John had planted and raised, and 
thrashed himself, and expected to have to live 
on. That broke John down ; he had n’t 
been used to hard times when he was a boy, 


53 


PETER AND POLLY. 


and when that happened he gave up, sick, 
and was as crazy as a loon. His wife bor- 
rowed a bed of my sister Betty for him to 
lie on, and I went and sat up with him three 
nights running ; and the fourth morning I 
went down to the house, — a miserable place 
it was too, made of half-fitting logs with one 
small isinglass window ; the doors were open, 
and I went in and looked everywhere, but 
there was n’t any one to be seen. The 
sheets were turned down from the bed where 
John had been, but he was gone. I went 
out and searched through the fields near by, 
and up in the pasture I looked about and 
called, ‘ Rob ! Rob ! ’ — that was the name 
of John’s little boy about ten years old, — 
but nobody answered. At last, down in a 
bushy place, the first I knew I came upon 
Rob, sitting half hid by the tall weeds. He 
was white as a sheet, and his eyes were 
fierce and shining as a wild-cat’s. ‘ Touch 
him if you durst ! ’ he said ; and then he saw 


PETER AND POLLY. 


59 


who it was, and he came to me and began 
to cry, and he called his mother, — she was 
hid close by, — and she told me all about it. 
All through the night before John was out 
of his head, and kept saying he was dying, 
and that Abel would come and take his 
body for debt ; and when the breath did 
leave him she knew Abel could do that and 
she was afraid he might, so she and Jock 
Adams — he was a fellow near, not very 
quick-witted, but kinder than many folks that 
are — took the corpse and carried it out into 
the pasture and hid it under some elder- 
bushes. There he lay, the great white flow- 
ers — ’t was July — nodding and waving like 
white feathers over him. 

“ ‘ Don’t fret yourself, Mrs. Millin,’ said I ; 
‘Abel’s heart is hard enough for anything, but 
attaching a corpse is ghostly work, and he 
knows how folks look at it too well to try it. 
I ’ll make a coffin, and you go right ahead with 
the funeral.’ So I nailed up a coffln and put 


6o 


PETER AND POLLY. 


him in it, and we got bearers, and the minis- 
ter made a prayer ; but I felt easier myself 
when the ground was over him. And you 
ought to have seen that boy, Rob, at the 
funeral : he just sat by the coffin and watched 
for the sheriff, his great eyes like burning 
coals. It almost scared me.” 

“ But what became of John’s wife ? ” 

“ O, she ’s gone too. She was a sickly crea- 
ture, and after her husband died, she failed 
fast, though she lived nearly three years. As 
for Rob, just before she died she ’prenticed 
him to a man named Dow, a shoemaker. I 
think her mind was broken when she did it. 
Dow’s sister, a crafty-tongued woman, tended 
her in her sickness, and doubtless influenced 
her when her mind was wandering. It is, I 
fear, a hard place for the poor boy.” 

Polly’s romance-loving heart thrilled with 
indignant pity as she listened to this tragic 
tale. Her sympathies went out toward this 
unknown, much-suffering “ Rob.” She wished 


PETER AND POLLY. 


6l 


she could see him and tell him how sorry she 
was for all his trials. “ But that will never 
be ! ” she said, as she retold the story to 
Peter, when, half an hour after, he came in. 



CHAPTER IV. 

P OLLY’S heart beat very fast, when, on 
the last day of their journey, the old 
horse began to quicken his pace, and Mr. Pur- 
bean pointed to a black weather-beaten build- 
ing, on two sides of which an old barricade 
was standing, built of hewn logs to the height 
of the roof, with a sentry-box still perched in 
the corner. “ Little girl,” he said, “ that ’s the 
old garrison ; we are getting to the village, 
and you will know your uncle’s, for it ’s next 
to the meeting, and the largest house in the 
place.” 

Polly sat up very straight, and tried to look 
her best as she rode up the street, the village 
dogs barking, and the ever-present hogs grunt- 


PETER AND POLLY. 


63 


ing, and scampering, this way and that, before 
them. 

It was really a pleasant place, for, though 
most of the dwellings were small and un- 
painted, they were tidily kept, and most of 
them recently built, giving a new, fresh look 
to the village, to which she had not been ac- 
customed in her Massachusetts home. 

The meeting-house was a substantial-look- 
ing building, with a square porch at one end, 
surmounted by a belfry yet waiting for a bell ; 
and next it, separated by the graveyard, and 
with a thrifty orchard of immense pear and 
apple trees beyond it, — for there were “ giants 
in those days” in the fruit-growers world, — 
stood her Uncle Philbrick’s home, a large, 
handsome house, painted of a light yellow 
color, and with a multiplicity of windows 
which even inexperienced Polly realized must 
have cost a pretty penny, considering the price 
of glass. 

“ How lovely and genteel it is ! ” she thought, 


6 4 


PETER AND POLLY. 


as she dismounted at the horse-block, beside 
which Peter, already arrived, was waiting as 
he had done at the inn. “No vulgar block,” 
she noticed, with her grandeur-loving eyes, 
like the pine stumps which served that pur- 
pose by so many houses, but a fine round of 
well-cut stone. 

“ And how lovely and genteel she is ! ” she 
thought again, when the door opened and her 
aunt came out to meet her ; a handsome wo- 
man of nearly fifty, with keen black eyes, 
trim figure, and wonderful pink and white 
complexion, whose fairness was enhanced by 
a small black patch on her left cheek. Her 
dress was of homespun, but of the nicest qual- 
ity, her cap-border was trimmed with fine lace, 
and her flowered silk neckerchief, where it 
crossed her bosom, was fastened with a pin of 
brilliant stones set in silver. 

Polly returned her kiss with warmth. She 
was quite sure she should like her, only she 
wished her black eyes were not quite so sharp ; 


PETER AND POLLY. 


65 


they seemed to see at a glance everything 
about her. And Polly wished the pins were 
out of her cloak, that it might display its 
beauty, so as to make a favorable impression 
upon her aunt. 

“Have the saddle-bags come?” she asked 
Peter. He nodded in answer, but Polly no- 
ticed that he had his most sober face. 

“ Won’t you come in and have a drink of 
cider ? ” said Mrs. Philbrick to Mr. Burbean, 
who, having helped his charge to alight, was 
drawing up the bridle to move on. 

“ No, madam, I thank you,” he answered, 
deferentially. “ I ’ve had to come on slowly, 
so as not to tire the little girl; and as I left 
four of the children ailing, I want to get 
home.” 

“ But I would like to ask you,” said Mrs. 
Philbrick, stepping up by his horse’s side, 
“ what people are saying, and how things look 
where you have been ? ” 

“ Well, I think things look dark,” he an- 


66 


PETER AND POLLY. 


swered ; “ here we are, a weakly young coun- 
try, at war with a strong old one. It ’s like a 
small cub fighting with a grown bear. As far 
as I can see, there ’s a hard time coming. 
Breadstuff's will be high, and cattle will be 
scarce, and the paper-money — ” 

“ What do people say about that ? ” inter- 
rupted Mrs. Philbrick, anxiously. 

“ Well, some have hopes of it, and some 
ham t,” was the reply ; “ but for my part, I 
think it will be sure to bring trouble.” 

“ It ’s a ruinous, mischievous thing, having 
it,” said Mrs. Philbrick ; “ I don’t know where 
’twill end. My husband says — ” She hesi- 
tated, stopped, and began again, “But we 
ought to be willing to make sacrifices for 
our country, and I ’m sure we do. We wear 
homespun all the time, and make herb-tea 
three times a day ; and as for killing sheep, my 
husband thinks the farmers ought to agree to 
raise all the lambs to grow wool for the army. 
I don’t think there is any one more ready to 


PETER AND POLLY. 


6 / 


suffer than my husband and myself, as far as 
we have opportunities.” 

“Yes, madam, and we sha’n’t be likely to 
lack ’em,” said Mr. Burbean, a little ner- 
vously, as if conscious he was nearing a dan- 
gerous subject. 

“ And as for giving, I don’t know who ’s 
done more than we,” continued Mrs. Phil- 
brick ; “ yarn, to knit stockings for the sol- 
diers, and lead, and some pewter we ought 
not to have spared, to run into bullets, and 
flannel for blankets ; and my husband gave 
more money than any one to fit out the last 
company with knapsacks and guns and bayo- 
nets.” 

“You never heard of my joining in saying 
your husband had n’t done enough,” returned 
Mr. Burbean, desirous to protect himself from 
any thought of blame. “ It ’s a monstrous 
raw day,” he added, turning the subject, “and 
you must n’t stand out o’ doors, madam.” He 
gave his horse a cut with the short stick which 


68 


PETER AND POLLY. 


he carried by way of a whip, and started off, 
though Mrs. Philbrick would evidently have 
liked to detain him longer. 

“ Come in, niece ! come in, nephew ! ” said 
Aunt Nancy, when he rode away, and led 
first into a long, wide hall, then into a parlor 
dark as Egypt, from the inside wooden shut- 
ters being closely drawn, then into a hand- 
some sitting-room, of which the snow-white 
floor was sprinkled with shining sand, and the 
walls were covered with panel-work painted 
bright blue. A tray, with wineglasses and a 
silver tankard, adorned the heavy mahogany 
sideboard, and in the corner stood a tall clock 
with glistening peacock’s feathers nodding 
over it. 

“ What a lovely, genteel place ! ” thought 
Polly again ; and yet her first sense of delight 
seemed somehow to have flown. Perhaps, 
she reasoned, it was because she was so cold ; 
for she was shivering, and in the wide fireplace, 
• with its elegant brass andirons, only a feeble 


PETER AND POLLY. 


69 


blue flame was fluttering over two moist green 
sticks. 

Aunt Nancy helped Polly to take off her 
wrappings. She looked sharply at the scarlet 
cloak. “ A very showy garment,” she re- 
.marked, as she folded it up ; and, taking off 
the protecting veil from Polly’s fine “ musk- 
melon hat,” she examined it carefully, as if 
with a milliner’s critical eye. 

“ If you want to warm your feet, you may 
come into the kitchen,” she said, at last. And 
Peter and Polly followed 'into a large room 
that looked dark and cheerless, spite of the 
great fire on its hearth, from its walls being 
painted a dull Indian red, — a common color 
for working-rooms in those days. There were 
large beams in the ceiling, from which hung 
long strings of dried apples, tufts of herbs, 
bunches of onions, crook-necked squashes, and 
the glowing flame of bell-peppers. A tall girl, 
with a mulatto’s complexion and crisp hair, 
but with something in her features and bear- 


70 


PETER AND POLLY. 


ing that suggested Indian blood as well, was 
stirring, with a long wooden stick, a kettle 
of boiling hominy that hung from the crane 
over the fire. She looked out of the corners 
of her eyes at the new-comers, as she moved 
about doing her housework ; and when she 
sat down with a pan of apples to be pared, 
she changed the place of her chair so as to 
be where she could still watch them. Under 
Aunt Nancy’s eyes and the girl’s, poor Polly 
felt between two fires. “ If she could only 
have something to eat, perhaps it would seem 
more cheerful,” she thought, as she smelt the 
hominy, for her long ride had made her hun- 
gry ; but Mrs. Philbrick made no mention of 
luncheon, and she concluded she must wait 
for the family supper. 

“You had better warm your feet,” said 
Aunt Nancy ; for Polly, sitting before the fire, 
had kept those offending members tucked 
away under her dress in a most peculiar fash- 
ion. Polly put them out towards the blaze, 


PETER AND POLLY. 


71 


timidly. What lumpy ankles she had ! What 
gouty-seeming legs ! She had changed about 
to-day, and by dint of pulling and tugging, and 
breaking a few stitches, had succeeded in 
drawing on her silk stockings over the legs of 
the yellow woollen ones. The feet she had 
nearly cut away. Aunt Nancy spied the 
trouble in a minute. 

“ You have n’t put those nice silk ones over 
another pair of stockings, have you?” she 
asked. 

“ Yes, madam,” returned Polly, not know- 
ing how to evade. 

“But you don’t wear silk stockings every 
day, do you ? ” continued her questioner. 

“O, no ! ” replied Polly; but looking up, and 
seeing a pair of handsome jewelled knobs in 
her aunt’s ears, she thought it best to main- 
tain her position as a young woman of fash- 
ion, — “ O, no ! but I have a good many pairs 
of them, a good many pairs.” 

Aunt Nancy’s face clouded. “ Well, if you 


72 


PETER AND POLLY. 


have, I hope you don’t expect to wear them 
here,” she said, in a somewhat severe tone. 
“ Little girls like you, I am sure, have no need 
of finery ; and, even if you were older, it is 
more becoming for young women in times 
like these to be learning how to card and spin 
and weave, than to be thinking about bedizen- 
ing themselves with rich clothes.” 

“ But father,” began Polly, by way of 
apology, “bought and had made for me a 
good many things before I came, because he 
thought it would be harder to get them here, 
and be troublesome for you beside ; so he 
bought what he thought would last a long 
while, just as he got Peter’s Latin books, so 
that he could have them for study as soon as 
he could get a teacher, to be fitted for college.” 

Aunt Nancy’s face darkened again. “As 
for Peter,” she said, turning to him, as he 
stood gloomily looking toward the fire, “your 
father writes me that you are exceeding fond 
of your books, and an apt scholar for your 


PETER AND POLLY. 


73 


years. I am very glad to find you have im- 
proved your advantages, for, I fear, in times 
like these, people will not have much leisure 
for study. A great many young men have 
gone to the war, and those that are left have 
to do double duty ; some schools are being 
closed for lack of teachers, and college educa- 
tions will have to be scarce.” 

“ But Peter,” piped in Polly, always a little 
too ready to put in a word, “must study, 
whatever comes ; for father says it ’s a pity 
not to have him get all the learning he can, 
when he is such a forward lad ; and father left 
word — ” 

Peter shook his head savagely, to make her 
stop. 

“Your father left word, I trust,” said Aunt 
Nancy, with impressive solemnity, “that you 
should be obedient children, and do as your 
uncle and I see fit. We shall give you every 
advantage we think it right for you to have ; 
and if we deny you anything, we shall expect 


4 


7 4 


PETER AND POLLY. 


you to realize that we know what is best for 
you, and do it for your good.” 

Polly saw the odd-looking colored girl 
glance up from her apple-paring with a queer 
twinkle in her black eyes. She was evidently 
pleased to have some one come in for a share 
of her mistress’s counsels and reprimands. 

“ When you have warmed your feet, you 
had better come up stairs to your bedroom, 
and change your stockings, and I will help 
you to unpack your bags,” said Aunt Nancy, 
after a long silence that had followed her 
last remark ; and Polly, completely subjugated, 
obeyed without a word. 

It was a neat little chamber that she -found 
ready for her reception. Its high-heaped, 
single bed, with its heavy quilt of blue and 
white woollen, was partially concealed by 
“ hangings ” of checked linen of the same 
color, and a snowy curtain, wrought with blue 
yarn, hung at the window ; but Polly’s troub- 
led eyes at once perceived that there was no 


PETER AND POLLY. 


75 


looking-glass upon the wall, and, what was 
worse, the one window looked out upon the 
graveyard, where the autumn wind now chased 
the dead leaves to and fro, over mounds cov- 
ered with the brown frozen grass, — desolate, 
unmarked graves, for there were but four or 
five headstones in the whole enclosure. As 
for unpacking the bags, Aunt Nancy certainly 
performed her task thoroughly. She pulled 
out every article, and examined it minutely 
before she laid it by. She noticed the trim- 
ming of the dresses, the quality of the linen 
under-garments, the sewing of the patchwork 
pocket, and the starching of the tuckers ; 
she contemptuously sniffed at the sight of the 
unlucky sampler, and even peered into Polly’s 
box of mementos, locks of hair and scraps of 
copied verses, the costless keepsakes of her 
childish friends. 

“ There is a cousin of my mother’s living 
near here, is there not ?” asked Polly, “a lady 
named Miss Keziah Hapgood. My father 


76 


PETER AND POLLY. 


wanted me to find if there was, and to go and 
visit her if she asked me, for he was sure she 
would be kind to me for my mother’s sake.” 

“ There is such a person,” answered Mrs. 
Philbrick, coldly, and counting over Polly’s 
pairs of stockings as she did so, “ but she does 
not live near here, and — she — is not a per- 
son I have — a great deal to do with,” she 
added slowly, as if reflecting what to say. “As 
for your clothes, I fear they are unseemly fine 
for a girl of your age,” she remarked, when her 
scrutiny of them was completed. 

Poor Polly ! The charm had flown from 
Aunt Nancy. She seemed plainer to her than 
even Mr. Burbean in his coarse coat and 
greasy buckskins. She quite envied Peter his 
boy’s privileges ; for he, meanwhile, had left 
the house and gone down to his uncle’s store, 
the only one in the neighborhood. 

The store was a long, low building with' 
two doors, outside of which a half-dozen ox- 
teams were standing, while within the room 


PETER AND POLLY. 


77 


was almost filled by customers and village 
loungers. 

At one end a great fire was roaring, and 
round it a group of teamsters was gathered, 
while near by was a small counter set with 
mugs and glasses in front of a deep shelf dis- 
playing jugs and decanters and various pew- 
ter measures. Behind the counter stood a 
handsome man of fifty-five, busy, when Peter 
entered, in filling from a brown jug a wooden 
bottle for a red-faced man wearing a shoe- 
maker’s apron. He came forward and greeted 
Peter cordially. “ And this is the nephew 
who has come to be a son to me ! ” he said, 
taking the boy’s hand warmly in his own ; 
“ but since we shall have plenty of time to 
talk together, and as to-day is one of my busi- 
est, when, as you see, I am taking a clerk’s 
place, I trust you will look about for yourself 
till I am at leisure.” 

Peter, thus encouraged, and anxious to 
guess at his future, boy like, sauntered round 


73 


PETER AND POLLY. 


with his eyes wide open to see everything to 
be seen. 

What a busy, busy place it was ! 

There were more customers than Mr. Phil- 
brick and his assistant could possibly attend 
to. Here was a woman trying to barter some 
green cheeses, flavored with johnswort and 
tanzy, in part payment for a linen-wheel ; 
there, a rough-looking boy was endeavoring 
to dispose of a half-dozen hog-yokes, made by 
himself; while a coquettish miss, with her 
hair drawn over an immensely high cushion, 
was making a poor bargain, for herself, by 
exchanging a quantity of woollen yarn for a 
tall horn comb and a necklace of showy 
beads. Suddenly the loud talk around the 
fireplace was checked ; a little man with rosy 
face and snow-white wig appeared at the door ; 
Mr. Philbrick hastened immediately to serve 
him, bowing low and respectfully; and with- 
out being told, even Peter was at once aware 
of the presence of the village preacher. 


PETER AND POLLY. 


79 


From floor to ceiling the store was filled 
with articles of merchandise. Home-made 
cloths, linen, tow, and woollen, wooden ware 
of all kinds, “wheels within wheels,” candle- 
sticks and warming-pans, hoes, rakes, and 
shovels, medicines for the sick, and ribbons 
and laces for the would-be fair, — nothing was 
wanting. In the back part of the building 
were large bins heaped with grain, and one 
small apartment divided from the main room 
was partially filled with skins and furs; for 
Mr. Philbrick had driven, heretofore, a brisk 
trade with hunters and trappers. Black-bear 
skins and gray wolves’, silver fox and red, 
mountain cat and wolverine, glossy mink and 
soft brown beaver, — how many brookside 
builders, how many fierce wild creatures of 
the forest, were represented by those heaps 
of fur ! As for the piles of deer and moose 
hides, Peter scarcely gave them a look. 

Surely, there was enough both to see and 
to hear in this little store ; yet Peter gazed 


8o 


PETER AND POLLY. 


about with a stranger’s homesick heart, and, 
for some unknown reason, felt by no means 
drawn toward his uncle. He wondered at 
himself that he was not ; for Mr. Philbrick 
seemed, certainly, as his father had described 
him, “ a gentleman, both in looks and bear- 
ing” ; not tall, but straight, with finely shapen 
limbs, a beauty much appreciated in those 
days. His complexion was clear, and his 
features handsome, only his eyes had a cold, 
hard look, and the smile which constantly 
played about his mouth had a frigid bright- 
ness, like ice in the sun. His dress, like his 
wife’s, was of the best quality of homespun ; 
but the value of his shoe and knee buckles, 
and the fineness of his shirt-ruffles, proved 
him to be by no means forgetful of the re- 
finements of dress. The throng of customers, 
many of whom had a considerable distance to 
go home, all departed before the brief autumn 
day had fairly passed, and Mr. Philbrick threw 
round him his long cloak to go home to his 
supper. 


PETEK AND POLLY. 


Si 


“ Nephew,” he said, as Peter walked beside 
him, “ I have heard, from your father, of your 
ready parts and your industry as a scholar, 
and, when circumstances permit, we shall be 
most happy to obtain for you some master 
who will be able to further you in your 
studies. Till then, with all respect to the 
Greek and the Latin, I think the best thing 
you can do is to try and obtain a practical 
knowledge, both of the use and the proper- 
ties of figures, such as you will acquire in 
trade ; and for this purpose I intend to give 
you a place at the little counter near the 
fireplace, where you found me, myself, to- 
day. It will be light work, — all you will have 
to do is to measure out for the various cus- 
tomers the different kinds of spirits they may 
want, and to see to keeping their scores, — 
very light work ; or, if some woman comes in 
and wants a bodkin, or some cap-lace, or such 
trifling thing, if you are not otherwise busy, 
you can attend to her ; — no hard labor, and 


82 


PETER AND POLLY. 


a great deal of knowledge to be gained. 
Everything in its place, my lad ; Greek and 
Latin in theirs, and trade in its own. You 
will always be the wiser for a little practical 
knowledge of the use of figures.” 

More sober-looking young folks are seldom 
seen than the two who sat opposite each 
other at Mrs. Philbrick’s supper-table. The 
keen-eyed maid-servant glanced first at one, 
then at the other, and then smiled to herself, 
when she brought in a plate of hot fire-cakes. 
Polly’s heart was so full of her troubles 
that even her traveller’s appetite was gone ; 
the hominy tasted to her like “ bread of af- 
fliction,” the catnip tea like a bitter draught. 
She almost wished her cup could have been 
filled from the little pot that stood by her 
aunt’s plate, and from which she replenished 
her husband’s teacup and her own. That 
little pot breathed round it an odor which 
made Polly think of what she did not, could 


not believe would 



American 


PETER AND POLLY. 


S3 


house. “ That was too much to suspect of 
people ! ” she thought, as she trifled with her 
pretty little silver teaspoon. It was marked 
on the handle, “J. Millin.” 

“Millin? Millin?” what was it connected 
with that name ? At last it came to her, — 
the teamster’s story of the young bridegroom 
in the gold-laced coat, and the dark-eyed boy 
watching his father’s corpse under the white- 
blossomed elder. “ The same name,” she 
thought, too full of her own dull forebodings 
to dwell long on anything not directly con- 
cerning herself. 

“ Polly,” said Peter, when, after supper, they 
were alone together for a few moments, — 
“ Polly, I am afraid we sha’ n’t be very happy 
here.” 

“ Afraid ? ” said Polly ; “I am monstrous 
miserable already!” 

“ Uncle Philbrick wants me to help in the 
store, and, if I do, how can I study at all ? ” 
asked Peter. 


8 4 


PETER AND POLLY. 


“And Aunt Nancy only likes to have me 
wear dreadful clothes,” bemoaned Polly. 

“ Well,” said Peter, as his father had wished, 
discreet beyond his years, “if we are not 
happy, let us keep our mouths shut and be 
quiet ; that is the be t thing that people in 
trouble can do.” 

Becky, the mulatto-girl, went up with Polly 
to her room at night, to carry the candle and 
see her in bed. “ Ye’r gitting lonesum ? And 
how d’ye think ye’r goin to like ? ” she asked, 
trying to make acquaintance. But Polly, just 
ready to cry, was in no mood to be approached, 
and gave, perhaps, too curt a reply. The girl 
felt it. She laid down Polly’s little mourning 
necklace, which she had taken up to examine, 
and snatched up the candle with a malicious 
twinkle in her eyes. “ I hope yer’ll sleep well, 
but I should n’t like to be so near that grave- 
yard ; more ’n one have seen them dead folks 
walkin’,” she said, shutting the door as she did 
so, and hurrying down stairs, chuckling to 
herself. 


PETER AND POLLY. 


85 


Poor Polly drew the curtains close, and hid 
her head under the sheet, till she heard the 
great clock below strike the hour of midnight. 
It seemed such a gloomy, dreary place she was 
in ! like a queen in a dungeon-cell, or a maid 
forlorn in a castle-tower ; and then it was such 
a perplexing puzzle ! Her aunt’s inconsistent 
harshness in speaking of Polly’s fine clothes, 
and her evident fondness for wearing them 
herself ; the boastful mention of herb-tea to 
Mr. Burbean, and the little pot by her plate ; 
the fine house, the costly table-china, the odd 
servant-girl with her Indian form and her mu- 
latto skin and her twinkling eyes, — all to her 
were mysteries. Wondering over them, she 
dropped asleep. Peter, in the little chamber 
on the other side of the house, sat up for a 
long while and looked out of the window at 
the orchard, where the tall trees stood, leaf- 
less and cheerless in the white moonlight. 
His boy life had but one ambition. “Come 
what may,” he said, over and over to him- 


86 


PETER AND POLLY. 


self, “I will, in some way, be fitted for col- 
lege ! ” 

Had Polly been older and shrewder, she 
would not have seen so much to surprise her 
in her uncle’s and aunt’s demeanor. Their 
conduct was, in a worldly view, a perfectly 
natural course. Abel Philbrick had in his 
boyhood been poor himself and thrown with 
men of wealth. The sense of contrast between 
his position and theirs had nursed in him an 
intense desire for riches and power, which had 
made itself the guiding motive of his life. By 
perseverance, sagacity, strict economy, and the 
most untiring industry, he had become pos- 
sessed of what was in those days a considera- 
ble fortune, while yet a young man, and could, 
had he so chosen, have made himself a pleasant 
home in one of the older towns of New Eng- 
land. But, to be “ second in Rome ” was not 
to his mind ; and he accordingly turned his 
thoughts toward the younger settlements in 
New Hampshire, where, thought he, “ I could 


PETER AND POLLY. 


87 


lead instead of follow, and my power, if lim- 
ited, would be undisputed.” 

But the way of a would-be leader is not 
always a primrose path. The sturdy settlers 
in the neighborhood to which he came were 
as independent thinkers as himself, and their 
wives in their tow aprons were by no means 
inclined to pay much deference to his hand- 
some bride in her wedding brocade. In fact, 
they soon found themselves standing quite 
alone in society. But if not loved or ad- 
mired, Abel Philbrick soon made himself an 
object of fear. He was the only person in 
the neighborhood whose property enabled 
him to be a habitual money-lender to the 
hard-pressed men, frequently in want of the 
actual necessities of life about him. He es- 
tablished, also, a small store, where he sold 
largely upon trust, and made sharp bargains 
in barter-trades. Woe to the delinquent 
debtor when pay-day came round ! He found 
he must deal with a man who, “ even to the 


88 


PETER AND POLLY. 


uttermost farthing,” would “ demand his own 
with usury ” ; and that, too, in a time when 
there was scarcely an article of food, clothing, 
or household stuff which it was not allow- 
able for a creditor to seize upon. Improved 
lands thus came into his possession, cleared 
and made fit for cultivation by their first 
unfortunate holders ; cattle which luckless 
farmers had sought to raise for themselves 
browsed in his pastures and fed in his stalls. 
His fine new house was filled with looking- 
glasses, tables, silver and pewter ware, and- 
irons and candlesticks, which had once be- 
longed to other owners. It is impossible to 
conceive the bitterness of feeling which those 
who had, sometimes justly, been obliged to 
yield up such articles of household use and 
necessity, and were suffering for the want of 
them, often felt toward the person that had 
taken them. But the doubtfully gotten wealth 
which had made Mr. Philbrick many secret 
enemies in his own township had served to 


PETER AND POLLY. 


89 


recommend him in other communities. Con- 
scious that his new fortunes made him more 
nearly their equal, he revived his old ac- 
quaintance with two or three families residing 
near Portsmouth, and through their influ- 
ence and favor he received from the Gov- 
ernor and Council an appointment as agent, 
or under-surveyor, of “ The King’s Woods.” 
It was his care to see that none of the tall 
white-pines, which, by British law, were re- 
served for the use of the royal navy, were 
cut without his authority. The largest of 
these trees were marked, and a register was 
kept of them, and a considerable fine exacted 
from any one who had been found disobeying 
the law by cutting one, or from any hapless 
husbandman who, in clearing his own land, 
had been so unfortunate as to damage one 
growing upon it. In the exactions of these 
fines Mr. Philbrick was exceedingly strict, 
and would abate nothing ; though some sus- 
picious persons hinted their doubts if the 


9 o 


PETER AND POLLY. 


king’s treasury was ever much richer for 
his extreme zeal in collecting them. Year 
by year, Mr. Philbrick’s fortune increased, 
while his ambition grew with it, and his 
style of living became more costly. His 
wife sent to Portsmouth for stiff silk dresses 
and real laces. Their table was set with 
daintiest china, and. as a crowning act, they 
purchased a chaise, in which, over the rough 
roads around, they scarcely dared to ride 
about. But at last even they found them- 
selves under a shadow. The trouble between 
the mother-land and our own became more 
and more an acknowledged fact. “ The air 
was full of freedom.” The plain-spoken com- 
mon people woke to a new sense of their 
dignity as “ sons of liberty.” Mr. Philbrick 
thought it best to overlook the wanton cut- 
ting of King George’s pines for the present. 
He said nothing, and hoped the gathering 
storm would pass by ; but no, the feeling 
was too deep to be transient. The leading 


PETER AND POLLY. 


91 


spirit of the place was the minister, a dar- 
ing little man, Parson Piper, who loved to 
rule by nature, and whose office in those 
days gave to him the power to do so in realit} r . 
An ardent politician, who never knew the 
name of fear, and whom a little opposition 
would only rouse to make more outspoken, 
his sermons were at this time about as peace- 
breathing as the Marseillaise Hymn. In his 
pastoral calls, his conversation stirred up the 
people to resistance to oppression like the 
sounding of a fife. By and by, the reports 
came of the battles of Lexington and Con- 
cord, and afterwards of Bunker Hill. Like 
one man, the people were united. Poor 
“ Pine Abel,” as in derision he was called, 
found himself in a hard place. Some zealous 
patriots banded themselves together not to 
buy anything at his store, or have any deal- 
ings with him, until his position should be 
satisfactorily explained. “ Brown Beck,” a 
slave -girl of mixed white, Indian, and negro 


92 


PETER AND POLLY. 


blood, whom Mr. Philbrick, like most of his 
possessions, had taken in payment for debt, 
brought to her mistress a startling tale of a 
plan by some lawless young fellows of pay- 
ing up old scores by riotous proceedings 
against her master. It never seemed to oc- 
cur to her master and mistress that Brown 
Beck was “ as good to carry as to fetch,” 
and, by her exaggerated revelation of affairs 
in the household, — of the little pot by her 
mistress’s plate, and of mysterious words 
dropped by her master, — had done much to 
awaken prejudice against them, and even to 
sow suspicions which were wholly unfounded 
among the lower classes of the village gossips. 

Mr. Philbrick found he must take a de- 
cided stand, although, in truth, beyond his 
own interests, he had little concern as to what 
form public affairs might assume. Accord- 
ingly, in a gathering of the townsfolk, he 
took the opportunity of declaring his position 
in a speech, whose fervor, he thought, would 


PETER AND POLLY. 


93 


make amends for his delay. He urged the 
young men to enter the newly formed army, 
and called on parents to offer their sons, and 
wives their husbands, on the altar of freedom. 

His wife laid by her costly dresses, and 
talked of economy, frugality, and devotion to 
her country wherever she went ; for poor 
Aunt Nancy was fond of display, and must 
make a show of her patriotism, as she had 
done before of her wealth and station. Be- 
sides, Brown Beck’s accounts had sorely 
frightened her. She thought if her brother 
should enter the army, and her niece and 
nephew come to her during his absence, their 
presence would be, in a measure, a protec- 
tion to her husband ; for, with all her faults, 
she was a devoted wife. But when Peter 
and Polly appeared, — Polly with the fine 
clothes which she feared would scandalize 
the frugal-minded neighbors, whom now she 
wished to please ; and Peter with a letter 
from his father requesting the procurement 


94 


PETER AND POLLY, \ 


for him of some teacher in Latin and Greek, 
just when the penny-saving Mr. Philbrick 
(whose best clerk had left for the army) had 
concluded to make him of service in the 
store, — she was perplexed and troubled. 

She had other troubles as well, for her hus- 
band’s business anxieties she made her own, 
and just then he was full of them. He had 
lent large sums of money in such a way, that, 
could he have collected his dues as usual, it 
would have added greatly to his wealth to 
have done so. As it was, should his debtors 
choose to pay in the newly issued paper cur- 
rency, of which, with his shrewd eyes, he -al- 
ready stood in dread, — what then ? 

That was what Aunt Nancy was always 
\ 

asking herself when she had a sharp word 
for Brown Beck or a cross look for Polly. 




CHAPTER V. 

I T was a bright Sunday morning in De- 
cember. Polly sat in her uncle’s great 
pew in the meeting-house, slyly looking around 
her, it is to be feared, rather than listening to 
the sermon. She had on her fine hat and 
her scarlet cloak trimmed with fur ; but she 
had been made to wear her common *lress 
rather than her best one, and over her shoul- 
ders was pinned a checked homespun necker- 
chief, to make her look more as a “ girl of the 
period ” should, in her Aunt Nancy’s eyes. 

The meeting-house was yet unfinished ; for, 
although 

“ Great church, high steeple, 

Proud committee, poor people,” 


9 6 


PETER AND POLLY. 


was a descriptive rhyme of the time, it was 
still true that “ pay as you go ” was more the 
motto of church-builders than it is to-day. It 
was now seven years since the raising of the 
meeting-house frame ; but though, every town- 
meeting since, some appropriation had been 
made, there was still much remaining to be 
done toward completing the building. There 
was, as yet, no gallery in the place designed 
for it, and some of the gallery windows were 
unglazed, and boarded up until glass could be 
procured ; the floor of the house had been 
“ lotted/’ — that is, the aisles and the location 
of each pew had been chalked upon the floor, 
and a committee had been appointed to decide 
what families should build upon the different 
lots, — but times were hard, and only three 
men, Justice Cram, Mr. Philbrick, and the vil- 
lage doctor, had availed themselves of the 
right to erect one, though, at the public ex- 
pense, a pew had also been provided for the 
minister’s family. The rest of the audience 


PETER AND POLLY. 


97 


still sat on benches. They were very grand 
and genteel things to have, those pews “ with 
winscot work.” Polly felt quite like a superior 
being, as, seated in her uncle’s, she peered 
round at the congregation a little more than 
was becoming a temple worshipper ; at the old 
men in their red flannel caps, and the old wo- 
men with their great muffs ; at Parson Piper’s 
large brood of little folks all trying to get their 
feet on one small foot-stove ; at the solemn- 
looking deacons, who, like the minister, faced 
the assembly, while in front of their seat hung 
on hinges a semicircular board, which served 
as a table on sacramental days. 

Parson Piper, this morning, looked unusu- 
ally bright and rosy, and in his fervent sup- 
plications for the triumph of freedom’s cause, 
and the protection of freedom’s army, so lost 
thought of all around him, as nearly to forget 
to pray for poor Mr. Burbean, who had sent 
in a note, having just buried his fourteenth 
child. 


98 


PETER AND POLLY. 


After the long prayer, Parson Piper lined 
out a hymn, one of Tate and Brady’s, which 
collection had not, in this country place, yet 
given way to the more modern Watts. How 
one of the deacons scowled during the sing- 
ing ! Polly could not help seeing his discom- 
fiture. A bass-viol had just been introduced 
into the singers’ seat, a large square, walled in 
like a pen, opposite the pulpit, with a long 
table for the singers to lay their books upon. 
Against the use of this instrument the deacon 
had testified in vain. “ The Lord’s house is 
not the place for fiddling,” he had said, and its 
profane notes were never heard but his face 
showed forth his disapprobation. But one 
good thing the viol did : it helped to drown 
the singers’ voices ; for music then, through- 
out the country, was a little-cared-for art, and 
in this inland parish had been more neglected 
even than in other places ; the Rev. Shear- 
jashub Smith, Parson Piper’s predecessor, hav- 
ing been a narrow-minded man of the pattern 








PETER AND POLLY. 


99 


of fifty years before, looking with disfavor on 
all new movements, and thinking singing by 
note, instead of by rote, a dangerous innova- 
tion little short of sin. 

When the text was given out, “ The arms 
of the wicked shall be broken, but the Lord 
upholdeth the righteous,” everybody knew that 
the sermon would be one for the times. Polly 
wondered, as she listened, whether old King 
George’s ears were not burning, over the sea ; 
she was sure they would be, could he have 
been in her place. 

On one side of the meeting-house, directly 
in the range of Polly’s gaze, was a long bench, 
on which the boys were seated. Here sat 
half a dozen lads, of about ten or twelve years, 
and one somewhat older, fifteen or thereabouts. 
He was coarsely dressed, and in garments far 
too thin for the day. His tow frock had a 
poverty-stricken look, and it made Polly al- 
most shiver to see it in that unwarmed house. 
Round his neck, however, was a warm black 


100 


PETER AND POLLY. 


and red woollen muffler. That was better than 
nothing, Polly thought, for she had a tender 
heart, and never saw anything like discomfort 
without a desire to relieve it ; yet she did not 
quite dare to pity him, when by chance he 
turned his head and she saw his face fully. It 
had such a daring, resolute look, such a fixed 
expression of determined purpose, that pity 
seemed an unworthy feeling to have for him. 
And still there was a patient sadness in his 
large dark eyes, that made even Polly sure he 
was not only poor, but lonely and in trouble. 
She was wondering what that trouble might be, 
when Price Hodgkins, the tithing-man, a dis- 
tant relative of her uncle, and a clerk in his 
store, came up the aisle. It was part of the 
tithing-man’s duties to prevent travel on the 
Sabbath, and to maintain order in the Sunday 
services, to drive out the dogs from the sanc- 
tuary, and to see that the boys, who were boys 
even in those days, were not carrying things 
with too high a hand. Such persons were not 


PETER AND POLLY. 


IOI 


unneeded, for the congregations of that time 
were much larger, and far more mixed, than 
those of to-day. The boys and younger peo- 
ple often sat together, and some eye to over- 
look them seemed, in many cases, indispensa- 
ble. But Price Hodgkins, a short, fidgety 
man, with a fondness for giving raps and cuffs, 
magnified his office, and was always looking 
round for a chance to exercise his authority. 
To-day he thought there was a disturbance 
among the boys, and made haste to bring the 
offender to punishment. But, with all his zeal, 
he had a time-serving heart, and, though he 
must have seen that the real culprit was Caleb 
Cram, a restless boy of thirteen, Justice Cram’s 
only son, who was amusing himself by sticking 
hedgehog-quills, which he had brought with 
him for his entertainment, into the chubby 
youngster who sat next him, and though, by 
good rights, he should have been in his fa- 
ther’s pew, the tithing-man dared not touch 
him, but gave a sharp rap, with his long staff, 


102 


PETER AND POLLY. 


at the older lad with the tow frock. It was 
quite safe to do that ! A bitter look of wounded 
pride and injured feeling came into the boy’s 
face ; a sense of injustice made his dark eyes 
flash. He bit his lip, as if trying to conceal 
how cruelly he had been hurt. 

“ It ’s a shame ! ” said Polly, in a whisper to 
Peter, beside her. 

Peter looked up, wondering ; his eyes had 
been fixed on the preacher, and he had seen 
nothing. 

Aunt Nancy shook her head at Polly ; but, 
though she ceased to glance about, she could 
not bring her thought back to Parson Piper 
and his sermon. That terrible enigma of life 
began to puzzle her. “ Whence comes all this 
pain and trouble in the world, and why is it so 
unequally divided ? ” She was anxiously pon- 
dering the question, in her blind, childish way, 
when she found the “ finally, brethren,” of the 
sermon was fairly passed, and the people were 
rising for the last prayer. As she went out 


PETER AND POLLY. 


103 


with her aunt, she saw, on the negroes’ bench 
by the door, Brown Beck, with a yellow ker- 
chief round her neck, looking disdainfully 
down on old Pompey, Justice Cram’s man of 
all work, a patient, pious old negro, the only 
other slave in the place. Just outside the 
door, in a big beaver bonnet, and large cloak 
of brown stuff, was a woman of perhaps forty- 
five years of age, singularly straight and tall, 
and well proportioned. Toil, care, and trouble, 
— one saw from a glance at her strongly 
marked yet gentle countenance that she had 
met them all, and met them with cheerful en- 
durance and fearless strength. Polly, coming 
down the meeting-house steps, felt her hand 
clasped by a firm grasp, like that of a man. 
“ I want to ask you,” said the tall woman, “ if 
you are Mrs. Philbrick’s niece, and Dr. Peter 
Austin’s little girl.” 

“Yes, madam, I am,” answered Polly. 

“ Then,” said the stranger, “ you must be 
my cousin Polly’s daughter. I knew that you 


104 


PETER AND POLLY. 


must be, when I saw you in the pew, for you 
have your mother’s face, and I love you for it ! 
And I am your mother’s cousin, of whom, 
perhaps, you have heard her speak, Keziah 
Hapgood.” - 

“ I have, indeed ! ” said Polly. “ She did a 
little while before she died, and told how she 
used to play with you, and be at your house 
when you were children together. My father 
said he thought you lived near here, and bade 
us ask about you of Aunt Nancy; and I believe 
Peter has a letter for you, which father wrote, 
and laid in our Bible, for us to give you if we 
saw you ; but Aunt Nancy never told us you 
went to this meeting.” 

“ Well,” said Miss Keziah, “ if that is so, I 
will walk over with you to your uncle’s house, 
and get it. I have wanted to hear from your 
family ever since your Uncle Philbrick told 
me of your mother’s death, and have thought 
very often of you, and, if your uncle and aunt 
are willing, I shall want you and your brother 


PETER AND POLLY. 


105 


to come over to my house, as soon as may be, 
and make me a long visit.” 

“ I am sure I should like to do so,” said 
Poily, quite wondering at her inclination ; for 
Miss Keziah was anything but the “ genteel 
lady,” who had always been the ideal of her 
fancy ; but the tall Amazon brought with her 
such a sense of love and protection, that she 
clung to her instinctively. 

Just at that moment the lad in the tow 
frock passed by. Miss Keziah laid her large 
hand, from which she had drawn the knit 
woollen glove, upon his arm. “ Rob,” she said 
gently, “ don’t be discouraged. Fear God 
and naught else. I saw you this morning, 
and you were not to blame.” 

“ And I saw too!” put in Polly, always 
ready for a word, and thinking her scarlet 
cloak gave her dignity enough to speak first. 
“ I was very sorry, and the tithing-man was 
very unjust.” 

The boy blushed and smiled. His toilful 


io6 


PETER AND POLLY. 


life had made him feel so much older than 
herself, that Polly’s forward sympathy seemed 
to him like the friendliness of a kind-hearted 
child ; yet he had seen enough of hard usage, 
and he valued it none the less. Mrs. Phil- 
•brick, who had stopped for a word with Mrs. 
Cram, came down the steps just then, and 
looked somewhat sourly when she saw Miss 
Hapgood speaking with her niece. She 
greeted her, however, with decent civility, and 
the three walked together to the house. 

The families who lived in close proximity 
to a meeting-house were, on Sunday noons, 
expected to keep open doors. Round their 
cheery fireplaces the people, who had come 
in from all sides of the neighboring country, 
used to meet, and replenish the iron pans of 
coals, which they carried in their tin foot- 
stoves, eat their luncheons of bread and 
cheese, discuss the sermon or the “ doctrines/’ 
whisper low the floating gossip, and pass 
round the cider-mugs. Now, on these occa- 


PETER AND POLLY. 


107 


sions, the state of the country was the one 
subject of conversation, often dwelt upon with 
such faith in God’s protecting care for what 
they deemed his cause, as to make it seem 
the most fitting theme for the day. Mr. Phil- 
_ brick’s, though so near the meeting-house, had 
never been a favorite Sabbath gathering-place, 
but there were, commonly, a few who met 
there : Price Hodgkins, the tithing-man ; and 
sometimes Justice Cram and his wife, for 
whom Mrs. Philbrick never failed to bring out 
a little of their choicest spirit in decanters ; 
and, on rare occasions, Parson Piper himself, 
who liked to argue upon Arminianism, Anti- 
nomianism, Election, Baptism, and the Half- 
way Covenant with Aunt Nancy, who had a 
taste for theological controversy. 

To-day, all these were there, and Mr. and 
Mrs. Burbean ; she with a mourning-scarf, in 
token of her affliction, and he with a pair of 
black gloves. It was the first time that Par- 
son Piper had come in,* at such a time, since 


io8 


PETER AND POLLY. 


Mr. Philbrick’s patriotism was called in ques- 
tion ; but to-day he was in good temper with 
all the world, except the British. The advice 
which the general Congress had given the 
delegates from the late Exeter Convention, 
the glorious prospect that New Hampshire 
would take the lead in assuming a certain 
form of self-government, till the present diffi- 
culties were over, were, to him, so cheering 
and inspiring, that he could scarcely find 
words to express himself, however dark things 
might seem from another outlook. As for 
Justice Cram, he was quite as ready for the 
new venture as the preacher, only for another 
reason ; for he, alas, had creditors in England, 
and the wider the disruption between the two 
countries the easier it was to leave them un- 
paid. 

The last war-news which the weekly post- 
rider had brought was of the capture of the 
brig Nancy, an ordnance-ship from Woolwich, 
with brass cannon and large stores of ammuni- 


PETER AND POLLY. 


IO9 


tion, triply precious when the Colonial army 
stood in so much need of them. 

“‘The arms of the wicked shall be broken/” 
said Parson Piper, repeating his text. “ I had 
another sermon, nearly finished, on ‘ Inherent 
Holiness/ but when Seth Kelly rode up with 
the news, I laid it away ; the text I preached 
on this morning came straight to my mind, 
‘The arms of the wicked shall be broken’ ; the 
weapons they have forged shall be turned 
against themselves.” 

“ They are a wicked set,” said Justice Cram, 
who had a vivid sense of the iniquities of 
other men, although he bore a somewhat 
doubtful reputation himself, — “a monstrous 
wicked set, those redcoats. It’s enough to 
call down fire from heaven, the doings of those 
troops shut up in Boston, — taking the Lord’s 
house to make a riding-school building ; and 
that ’s what Seth Kelly said they were doing, 
the villains ! ” 

“ Those British officers,” said Parson Piper, 


no 


PETER AND POLLY. 


“ have a persecuting spite against all the 
Presbyterian ministers and meeting-houses, 
for they call everybody Presbyterian that does 
n’t belong to the Church of England. They ’d 
call me so, though I am one no more than 
a Quaker. As for Episcopacy, it is the child 
of Papacy. I should have liked it better if 
our Commander-in-Chief had had a good old 
Puritan education.” 

“And so should I,” said Aunt Nancy; “a 
man that hain’t sound doctrinal views won’t 
be what can be relied on in other matters.” 

“I don’t know about that!” said Mr. Phil- 
brick, who, when he was surveyor of his 
Majesty’s woods, had secretly felt a certain 
drawing toward the Church of England ; 
“ there are different views as regards Episco- 
pacy. What Washington needs is courage 
to press the British a little harder. If Howe 
should have to give up Boston, in my opinion, 
it would bring the war to a close ; and what 
we want is as speedy a termination of this 


PETER AND POLLY. 


Ill 


controversy as we can have consistently with 
dignity.” 

“ Well, I think things look dark ! ” said Mr. 
Burbean. “ It will take a long time to pay 
up, so far as the war has gone, even if peace 
should come to-day.” 

“ What costs nothing is worth nothing,” 
said Cousin Keziah ; “ and freedom is worth 
having, even if it is bought with blood ! ” 

“ Amen ! ” said Parson Piper, solemnly ; 
“ ‘ Though an host should encamp about me, 
mine heart shall not fear; though war should 
rise against me, in this will I be confi- 
dent.’ ” 

Polly ran up stairs to get the letter her fa- 
ther had sent ; and Miss Keziah, when she had 
received it, rose to take her leave, not stopping 
to taste the Madeira that had been brought 
foward in honor of the Crams ; for the Justice 
was a man of influence, and his wife, though 
now a wrinkled old woman, who found her 
chief happiness in her snuff-box, had once 


I 12 


PETER AND POLLY. 


been an heiress in Newburyport, and had 
brought her husband a large fortune. 

“Won’t you stay and have your stove 
filled ?” asked Mrs. Philbrick of Miss Keziah, 
as she tied her bonnet and joined the clasp 
of her cloak. 

“ I brought no stove ; I never use one,” said 
Miss Hapgood, a little proudly, conscious of 
the superb constitution which enabled her to 
sit for hours in the unwarmed meeting-house, 
in December, with no sense of discomfort. 

“Well, there ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Cram ; “you 
ain’t much like me. My husband says I ’d 
like to use a warming-pan all summer ! ” 

Miss Hapgood broke the seal of her letter, 
and briefly glanced at its contents before she 
left. 

“ Their father writes very kindly,” she said 
to Mrs. Philbrick ; “and, if you are willing, I 
want your niece and nephew to come to my 
house and make me a long visit. I will send 
for them with the horse-sled, or — it is only a 


PETER AND POLLY. 


1 13 

little walk, three miles and a quarter — they 
can run over some morning.” 

“ Well, some time, some time, I will let them 
come, perhaps,” said Aunt Nancy, a little ner- 
vously, for it was a sore point with her that 
her young relatives had a kinswoman on their 
mother’s side living so near them ; a person, 
too, of so decided a character as Miss Hap- 
good. She did not wish to encourage an inti- 
macy between them, nor, on the other side, 
did she wish to appear anxious to avoid it. 

“ She is a singular kind of woman,” said 
Mrs. Philbrick, as the door closed behind her. 

“ I should think so, not to use a foot-stove,” 
returned Mrs. Cram. “It freezes me to think 
of it ! ” 

“ O, not that ! ” said Mrs. Philbrick, “ but 
she ’s a terrible outspoken, fear-naught sort 
of a woman. Why, to-day, I saw her talking 
with that Rob Millin as friendly as you please, 
and, what is worse, when Polly here was with 
her ; and a monstrous wicked boy he must 


H 


PETER AND POLLY. 


114 

be ; to think of a lad of his size being rapped 
by the tithing-man as he was this morning ! 
Shameful !” 

“ Rob Millin ? He ’s the shoemaker’s ’pren- 
tice, ain’t he ? ” asked Mrs. Cram. “ Well, I 
overheard Caleb say ‘ he did n’t want aught to 
do with him ’ ; and, if I do say it, there is n’t 
a better boy than my Caleb is, anywhere. 
But then, the boy ’s an orphan. I have some 
pity for him,” she added. 

“ But his father was a poor, broken-down 
spendthrift, who could n’t have done much for 
him if he had lived ! ” said Mrs. Philbrick, 
as she rose and brushed a few ashes from 
the hearth into the fire, as if, in doing so, 
she were ridding herself of a reproachful 
memory. 

“ Rob Millin ! ” Polly, overhearing the con- 
versation, almost started at the name. Could 
it be, in truth, that the dark-eyed boy in the 
tow frock and the ill-starred orphan of the 
teamster’s story were the same ? If so, it 


PETER AND POLLY. 


115 


seemed as though her Uncle Abel could be 
none other than the hard-hearted creditor of 
whom he had spoken. She looked at him as 
he sat in the arm-chair in front of the fire- 
place. Ostentatiously dressed in homespun 
throughout, his white hands (a large seal-ring 
on one of them) crossed upon his knee with 
its shining buckle, carefully shaven, neatly 
powdered, he was a pleasant picture of the 
country gentleman of the day ; and yet she 
turned from him almost with a sense of aver- 
sion. 

She went into the kitchen, where Peter, hav- 
ing no other book, was reading aloud from the 
Assembly’s Catechism to old Pompey, who had 
come in with two great foot-stoves to fill for his 
Master and Mistress Cram ; while four little 
Pipers, whom the good parson had brought 
with him (for, in this parish, the parsonage 
buildings and the minister’s farm were, con- 
trary to the usual custom, at some distance 
from the meeting-house), were eating dough- 


PETER AND POLLY. 


II 6 


nuts, which they had brought with them in a 
blue linen bag, and Brown Beck was whisper- 
ing to a stout woman in a red gown, who had 
come in with her. “ One pair ” — she heard 
her say. 




CHAPTER VI. 

I T was a long, dreary winter that opened 
before Polly, and often with a shiver she 
thought of the army keeping guard around 
Boston ; for her father, who was with them, 
had written of their sufferings in one precious 
letter which the post-rider brought on a 
snowy afternoon. The shrill north-wind had, 
for her, a new sound. She thought, as she 
heard its whistle, of the soldiers struggling 
northward, under the brave young Arnold, the 
godlike hero of her childish admiration ; or, 
when it wailed in the naked branches, it 
brought a vision of the wretched inhabitants 
still lingering in Boston, of whom her father 
had said in his letter, “it was reported by 


ii 8 


PETER AND POLLY. 


rumor they were suffering extremely from the 
cold, many often lying in bed all day, because 
they could afford no fires.” 

“ But that is an idle, slovenly way of keeping 
warm,” thought Polly ; “ I would keep up and 
move about till I did freeze, if I were they ! ” 
For motion was, to her restless self, one of the 
prime elements of happiness, and the strict re- 
straint under which her Aunt Nancy held her, 
and the dull monotony of her daily life, grew 
all the time more and more wearisome. If she 
could only get out and have some companion- 
ship, or excitement, or adventures ! If she 
were a man with a foe to fight and a cause to 
win, or a woman, who could have some part 
in the stirring scenes of the time, it seemed to 
her she would not complain. But to stay, 
week after week, shut up in this house, only 
breathing a clear space on the frost-whitened 
window, and looking out on the drifted high- 
ways, where the teamsters broke the path 
with their over-worked oxen, on the hemlock 


PETER AND POLLY. 


II 9 


woods and ice-bound river, and to feel that she 
had no work to share, and no pleasures to en- 
joy, was very dull indeed. 

Mrs. Philbrick, like most matrons without 
children, had her own ideas of the training of 
young persons, especially of girls, and Polly 
was a good subject for the application of her 
theories. If her rules did not work to her 
satisfaction, the fault was always in Polly, and 
not in her system of education. Young peo- 
ple should, in her belief, be seen and not 
heard ; speak when they were spoken to, and 
come when they were called ; be, in fact, mere 
puppets in the hands of parents and guardians, 
and yet instinctively be fitted, when the time- 
should come, to act their parts as men and 
women, with honor to themselves and their 
instructors ; for Mrs. Philbrick was never in- 
clined to judge too leniently those who might 
prove themselves failures in the end. 

“ If I could only go to school ! ” thought 
Polly, with less concern, perhaps, for the 


120 


PETER AND POLLY. 


knowledge to be gained than for the com- 
pany she would enjoy ; but there was, alas ! 
that winter, no school for her to attend. The 
interest in the war, so universally felt, had, for 
the time, made everything else seem of minor 
importance ; and, though each town of a hun- 
dred families was required by law to have a 
“ grammar school,” where the “ learned lan- 
guages ” should be taught, and every town of 
fifty families a school for reading, writing, and 
arithmetic, many places of considerable size 
and importance were that winter destitute of 
either. 

“ To have none is a shame and a disgrace !” 
said Parson Piper ; but even he was so ab- 
sorbed with the proceedings of the Exeter 
Convention, that he had little time to give 
to other matters, that body having adopted a 
constitution which had called forth a protest 
from the people of Portsmouth, and had star- 
tled the timid throughout the Colonies. “ Only, 
what my parish fails in doing now,” thought 


PETER AND POLLY. 


12 1 


he, “ I will see to it they make amends for, by 
having more costly teachers and longer schools 
another year.” For Parson Piper was a well- 
meaning tyrant, and believed in ministerial 
authority. 

Without a school, Polly had no excuse for 
going out every day ; walking for exercise 
was a thing unheard of, and so she was shut 
up all the week, only peeping out when Sun- 
day came round. “ The proper place for a 
woman is at home,” said Aunt Nancy, whose 
own rheumatic twinges scarce allowed her to 
put her foot upon the snow ; “ and here, with 
food and shelter, and clothes far too fine for 
a girl of your age, if you are not happy you 
must be very sinful.” 

If it is sinful to be impatient of confinement, 
Polly certainly was so, for she was discon- 
tented as a caged hawk. How many arts she 
used to drive dull care away ! In how many 
tasks she strove to find diversion ! She 
wrought on her sampler and finished it ; she 


122 


PETES. AND POLLY. 


hemmed long ruffles ; she begged bits of cloth 
and began some patchwork ; again and again 
she turned the pages of each book in the 
house, as well she might ; for, nicely furnished 
as it was, there were only six in it besides the 
Bible : “ Law’s Serious Call to a Devout and 
Holy Life,” quite a sprightly book Polly 
found it, in spite of its title ; a book of 
“ Sermons to Young Women,” doubly unat- 
tractive because her Aunt Nancy had said “ it 
would be an excellent thing for her to read ” ; 
a handsomely bound copy of “ Paradise Lost,” 
with “John Millin to his affectionate wife, 
Miranda,” written on the fly-leaf; Tate and 
Brady’s Hymns ; a sermon entitled “ Woe to 
Sleepy Sinners ” ; and a quaint old book, by 
Cotton Mather and other writers, which was 
made up chiefly of witch-stories and specula- 
tions in regard to them. Polly was half sorry 
she had found this last volume, for the tales 
in it would come back and haunt her when, 
at night, she went to her little room overlook- 


PETER AND POLLY. 


123 


ing the graveyard. “ They were all foolish 
fancies,” she kept repeating to herself, as she 
lay awake at night, with the sheet over her 
face, and yet she could scarcely keep them 
out of her mind. Against her will she seemed 
to see, with her closed eyes, scowling witches 
flitting through the midnight air, meeting for 
unholy baptisms, or partaking of mock sacra- 
ments, where the bread was “ read as blood ” ; 
Satanic cats, prowling round on errands for 
their master ; “ witch-poppets,” stuck full of 
pins; ill-omened yellow-birds, flying hither and 
thither, like golden feathered imps, — these 
“frightly” fancies were sure to haunt her as 
long as she was awake, and when, at last, she 
dropped asleep, it was only to be troubled by 
some ghostly dream. She did not dare to 
say one word to Peter. “ If she was afraid at 
night,” she thought, “at least, he should never 
have the comfort of teasing her about it.” 

It would have been better for her if she 
could have seen more of her brother ; but all 


124 


PETER AND POLLY. 


through the day he was with his uncle at the 
store, and, when evening came, they were 
sent off to their rooms by half past eight 
o’clock, at most ; for “ early to bed and early 
to rise,” was a motto then enforced, and nine 
o’clock was curfew-time for all wise families. 
As for talking freely with her brother in the 
presence of her uncle and aunt, could she 
otherwise have enjoyed it, that would scarcely 
have been deemed respectful to her elders. 
Her aunt, it is true, made conversation enough, 
but her remarks were apt to be so interspersed 
with advice and reproof, to which Polly felt 
a natural, though sometimes unjustifiable dis- 
like, that her society had little charm for the 
ardent girl ; while, as for visitors at the house, 
“ they were, in those hard times,” Aunt Nancy 
somewhat inhospitably said, “ the worst of 
moths”; and even the neighbors round, con- 
scious that Mrs. Philbrick held herself above 
them, came in infrequently and with shy for- 
mality. 


PETER AND POLLY. 


125 


Polly’s only resource, therefore, in the long 
dreary days, was the kitchen and Brown Beck, 
who, whatever were her faults, was certainly 
not dull company; for her tongue, in her talka- 
tive moods, ran like a miller’s wheel, and she 
was always glad to have Polly with her, as she 
sat, in the afternoon, knitting, or combing 
wool, with the crooked wire teeth of her cards, 
into rolls for the evening spinning. She was 
a strange creature, whose mother was a mu- 
latto slave, and her father a low Indian trapper, 
and her half-savage blood showed in a hun- 
dred different ways. It was her delight to 
relate most marvellous stories, which well 
supplemented those in Cotton Mather’s witch- 
book : of a woman, whose soul used to go in 
and out of her mouth in the shape of a spider ; 
of a wailing ghost, that haunted the old garri- 
son at the end of the village ; of magic charms 
and spells to lure good fortune, bring success 
in love, or drive away poverty and sickness. 
As for her own history, it was, to judge from 


126 


PETER AND POLLY. 


her words, a most wonderful one. What suf- 
fering she had endured ! through what dan- 
gers safely passed ! perils by land and by sea, 
— though how that could be was a mystery, 
for she told Polly she had never seen the 
ocean ; and Catechism-taught Polly scarcely 
dared believe of any one that she willingly 
would lie. 

She was always asking odd questions about 
Mr. and Mrs Philbrick, which Polly instinc- 
tively resented, and to which she made no 
reply ; but, finding that Polly had a certain 
dread of the graveyard beneath her chamber, 
she vouchsafed a little advice. 

“ If I were you,” she said, “ I should n’t be 
afraid after I was fairly in bed ; get a blanket 
over your face, and I don’t think anything will 
touch you ; but I must say, if I were you, I 
should n’t like to go up in that room as you 
will daytimes ; I think, if there are any ghosts 
or witches round, they are just as likely to 
come in the daytime as the night.” 


PETER AND POLLY. 


127 


Polly prided herself in feeling a great con- 
tempt for Brown Beck’s hobgoblins, but some- 
how, after that, whenever she went to her 
room, she felt in a new hurry to get down 
stairs again. 

There was only one thing in the near future 
to which she looked forward with pleasant 
anticipation, and that was the visit to Cousin 
Keziah’s. It was in vain, she knew, to ask 
her aunt to allow her to walk over to Miss 
Hapgood’s house ; but every day, as it came, 
however cold or stormy it might be, she used 
to look out, hoping it would prove the time 
when Cousin Keziah, or some messenger of 
hers, should arrive to take her away. Ox-sled 
or horse-sled or rough-built sleigh, whatever 
means of transportation, it would be equally 
welcome ; but week after week went and no- 
body appeared. 

One mild morning in February, Polly had 
the delightful privilege of going out for her 
aunt, to carry a pair of shoes to be mended ; 


128 


PETER AND POLLY. 


for cobbling held a more important place in 
a shoemaker’s business then than it does to- 
day. She skipped along, hurrying past the 
graveyard, where the white mist of a winter’s 
thaw hung, phantom-like, over the black stones 
marked with skulls and cross-bones ; she looked 
into the store, where Peter was mixing a bowl 
of toddy for a thirsty customer, who had 
brought in a large cake of yellow beeswax, 
to exchange as best he could, and stopped to 
caress the great tortoise-shell cat, that fol- 
lowed when she left the store. It was so 
pleasant to be out of doors, she was sorry 
when she reached the shoemaker’s shop, a 
small frame-house covered with boards, and 
with a broken wooden doorstep. A half- 
starved looking colt was feeding on a wisp 
of hay outside, and all around the threshold 
the snow was colored blue, where the shoe- 
maker’s wife had emptied her indigo-pot, as if 
in confirmation of a little notice pinned out- 
side the door, that she “ didd all kindes of 


PETER AND POLLY. 


I29 


dying.” From within, as Polly’s hand was on 
the latch, she heard loud sounds of profanity 
and anger ; and as she opened it, half trem- 
bling, she saw a short, stout man, with a red, 
repulsive face, adding energy to his words by 
violently shaking his fist, and giving way to 
such a torrent of passion and coarse abuse, 
as, in all her innocent life, she had never 
heard before. “You dog, you!” he raved, 
“ I ’ll break every bone in your body ! I ’ll 
flog the life out of you ! I ’ll — ” But, seeing 
Polly, he abruptly checked himself, and, with 
a conscious air, snatched up his hat and went 
out of the house by a back entrance. 

Polly grew white as the ghosts she feared : 
“It was so very dreadful ! ” 

It was the same tall lad that she had seen 
at meeting in the tow frock, who seemed to 
have been the object of this outburst of rage. 
He was seated on a high bench, sewing a pair 
of shoes with white camlet tops wrought in 
red and green silk, and, though flushed with 


130 


PETER AND POLLY. 


indignation, was by no means as excited as 
Polly was. She, poor child, was quivering, 
and quite forgot her errand at the first. 

“He won’t kill you, will he?” she asked, 
under her breath, looking up in the boy’s face, 
as she drew close to him. 

“ Kill me ? No ! he would have to lose me 
out of the shop if he did,” said the boy with a 
half-smile. 

“ But he frightened me so ! ” gasped Polly. 
“ I ’m afraid he will — for he said — he said — 
he ’d flog you. O, can’t you get out and run 
away ! ” 

“ Words don’t hurt anybody,” was the boy’s 
reply ; “ and, as for blows, he used to flog me, 
but he won’t much more. I ’m growing all the 
time, and I ’m sixteen now. It was n’t any- 
thing this morning, only Madam Cram’s shoes 
don’t fit, and he need n’t be angry about that, 
for I told him, at the time, he ’d given me the 
wrong last to make them on. I ’m growing — ” 
he repeated, half to himself, looking down at 


PETER AND POLLY. 


131 

his arm, which was bared for his work, and 
thinking how strong it was. 

“ And I hope you will grow ! grow as strong 
as Samson!” said Polly, who was good to 
make others’ troubles her own ; “ and if I 
could do anything for you, I would be glad,” 
she said. 

“ Did n’t you come on any errand ? ” asked 
the boy ; for Polly, absent-minded, had lost 
sight of her aunt’s message, and was starting 
off with her bundle. 

Polly blushed at her forgetfulness, and, 
handing him the parcel, told him what to do. 
“ It is for my aunt, Mrs. Philbrick ; you know 
who she is ? ” she inquired. 

“ I know who her husband is,” the boy an- 
swered, with a certain unconscious bitterness 
of tone, that made Polly think of the silver 
spoons on her aunt's table, and the handsome 
copy of “ Paradise Lost.” 

“ Well, now ! ” said Brown Beck, when Polly 
reached home ; “ there ’s been a woman here 


132 


PETER AND POLLY. 


to see about taking you to her house, and your 
aunt told her ‘ she would n’t say about it some 
time, but that at present she was n’t willing 
you should go away anywhere.’ ” 

“ Not go anywhere ! ” said Polly, the iron 
entering into her soul, — “ not go anywhere, 
when my father left word we should visit 
Cousin Keziah ! ” she repeated, sullenly, to 
herself, when .she had taken off her bonnet 
and sat down in front of the fireplace to warm 
herself, feeling a gloomy satisfaction in the 
thought that she was really very much abused ; 
and yet, when she remembered the glimpse of 
hard real life that she had had that morning, 
her own trials looked smaller and more trivial 
than she had ever regarded them before. 
But, from that time, Cousin Keziah’s home 
grew to be, in her fancy, a delightful Eden, 
doubly desirable because she felt herself shut 
out from it. To have Sunday come round 
and bring to her a sight of the tall woman in 
the brown cloak, and to receive from her a 


PETER AND POLLY. 


133 


bow and a smile, — for, after that first Sabbath, 
Miss Keziah never came in at noon so that 
she could speak to her, — and to watch and 
seq if the tall lad with the sad eyes was at 
meeting safe and sound, were Polly’s chief 
excitements. 

Peter, meanwhile, was leading a very differ- 
ent life. His uncle, when he came, had no 
determined plan of breaking off his nephew’s 
studies, but the times were such that he found 
it really difficult to procure suitable assistance 
in his store ; so, although Parson Piper, who 
was not only “ learned in the Scriptures,” but 
a Harvard graduate as well, and a good Greek, 
Latin, and Hebrew scholar, might at least 
have been solicited to give the boy instruction, 
as was common for ministers to do in those 
days, it was far easier and more profitable to 
make Peter of service in his own employ. 

It was his place to deal out such liquors as 
were “ drunk on the premises,” and, when not 
thus engaged, to tend at the end of the coun- 


134 


PETER AND POLLY. 


ter, where tapes, bodkins, stay-lacings, combs, 
and such small wares were sold. It was not, 
in itself, hard work, but to a boy who had only 
just reached his fourteenth birthday, it was 
both a laborious and an unprofitable employ- 
ment. The drinking of spirits was then the 
habit with all classes ; yet he used to weary 
of seeing the dull-eyed topers, who were his 
most frequent customers ; and the women who 
came to make barter-trades with their tow- 
cloth and home-made flannels were often so 
hard to please, that, when night came, he was 
quite tired out. He used to look wistfully at 
the covers of his Virgil and his Latin gram- 
mar (a Latin grammar, indeed, without one 
explanatory, helpful English word in it), and 
wonder whether, after all, “ he should ever be 
so happy as to go to college.” 

“If he only had Polly’s quiet opportunity 
for study ! ” he thought ; while to Polly, fret- 
ting over her loneliness, Peter’s active life in 
the store seemed a source of constant delight. 


PETER AND POLLY. 


135 


“ How many faces,” she thought, “ he must see ! 
how much he must hear of all that is interest- 
ing around, and always learn first the fresh 
news from the war ! ” The weekly post-rider, 
when he came by, was sure to tarry at the 
store long enough, not only to distribute what- 
ever letters and papers (and few and far be- 
tween they were) which he might have to 
leave there, but also to report such rumors as 
he might have gathered by the way ; for “ post- 
haste ” was with him by no means a descrip- 
tive term. The men who came in to trade, 
also, were sure to repeat whatever hearsay and 
often visionary accounts had reached them, 
of bloody battles that never were fought, and 
glorious victories that never were won. The 
tidings from Canada were so slow in com- 
ing, and so often contradictory, that they had 
almost lost their interest when they reached 
this quiet neighorhood, especially as few or 
none of the soldiers it had sent out had gone 
in that direction ; but, in the movements of 


PETER AND POLLY. 


136 

the troops around Boston there was felt an al- 
most breathless concern. Where will the end 
be ? It was a question ever present. The 
dissatisfaction of the Continental troops, the 
difficulties of getting enlistments, the scarcity 
of “ fewel ” and ammunition, the inadequacy 
of many officers, and the insubordination of 
others, the hard labor on the frozen ground, — 
all these things were anxiously discussed every 
day by the different customers that came in. 

Peter, at the store, knew of the presence of 
war by many other signs ; salt was scarce and 
dear, window-glass was scarcely procurable, 
and rum, sugar, molasses, and spices of all 
kinds grew more and more costly. Solicitors 
came every little while, asking Mr. Philbrick 
to contribute towards buying blankets, tent- 
ing, clothes, and other necessaries for the sol- 
diers ; for the public funds were insufficient for 
their needs, and the reluctant storekeeper, hav- 
ing once been an object of suspicion, felt com- 
pelled to give as often as requested. “How 


PETER AND POLLY. 


1 37 


long I shall have anything to give, is a ques- 
tion,” he had said, on one such occasion, with 
a dreary thought of the December emission of 
paper-money, “issued in defence of American 
liberty.” “ How long will you have anything 
to give ? I should think, from appearances, 
for some time,” said blunt Parson Piper, who 
stood by, looking round, as he spoke, at the 
shelves of goods and the bins of grain and all 
the overflowing plenty of that country store. 
His eye, as he did so, rested upon Peter, who, 
not chancing at the moment to be busy, had 
taken up his Ainsworth’s Dictionary, which, 
cut off as he was from most other books, he 
had taken with him to the store, to amuse 
himself, when not otherwise employed, in look- 
ing up odd words. 

Parson Piper’s eye kindled. “ A youngerly 
person ” with studious tastes was, in his mind, 
a sight worth seeing. “ Well, my lad,” he 
said, when he had looked at the book, “ if you 
are as fond of learning as you seem to be, 


138 


PETER AND POLLY. 


come up to my house, and I shall be willing 
to show you some volumes, and to assist you 
somewhat in your studies, for, in times like 
these, there is no reason why education should 
be neglected. ‘ Get wisdom, get understand- 
ing,’ it says in the Bible. Stirring times 
need men of mark. We have need enough 
of economy in the Colonies, but ignorance is 
the worst extravagance ! We can’t afford it ; 
we can’t afford it ! ” he repeated with em- 
phasis. “ We have too dull wits in New 
Hampshire ; we ought to be thinking more 
of raising up scholars for our little college in 
the woods!” For, next to the success of the 
Colonial army, the welfare of the infant Dart- 
mouth, in its forest cradle, seemed to him of 
most importance. 

Peter’s student’s dream came back at the 
good preacher’s words, and he thanked him as 
warmly as he dared, for a minister was, in his 
thought, a very great and superior being ; 
but just then his uncle, standing by, sent him 


PETER AND POLLY. 


139 


out on an errand, and by some strange chance 
it happened that, whenever after the minister 
came into the store, there was always some- 
thing his uncle wished him to be doing which 
would take him away from it. 

One bright morning in the last of March, 
Polly was in the kitchen, where Brown Beck 
was boiling maple-sap in the great kettle hung 
over the fire. Everybody was trying to make 
maple-sugar that year, when West India mo- 
lasses and sugar were luxuries only to be 
dreamed of. Far down the street she heard 
the beating of a drum. It grew louder and 
louder ! there surely was news from the war ! 
Even Aunt Nancy was aroused, and told Polly 
she might go out and find what was going on, 
when Peter rushed in, all glowing with ani- 
mation : “ Howe has evacuated Boston, and 
our troops are free to enter there ! ” 

That very night, one arm around her and 
Peter beside him, her father was with Polly 
once more. He looked worn and tired, as 


140 


PETER AND POLLY. 


well he might, after the dreary winter, but he 
was happy in a little furlough, which, by the 
long ride, pressing his way over the rough and 
sometimes flooded roads of spring, he had con- 
trived to spend with his children. A joyful 
reunion, but how brief it must be ! for he 
could tarry but two days at most, and then 
must be off again, to join that portion of the 
army which was to follow Washington wher- 
ever he might lead, probably to New York. 




CHAPTER VII. 

T WO more busy days are seldom passed 
than were those of Dr. Austin’s flying 
furlough. 

A crowd of village people thronged around, 
wherever he went, anxious to hear the latest 
news, and plying him with a thousand ques- 
tions. The newspapers of the day were so 
few, small, expensive, and unsatisfactory, that 
a man who had been an eye-witness of any 
event of public interest possessed an impor- 
tance hard to appreciate at the present time. 
Fathers and mothers, who had sons whom 
they had not heard from since their departure 
for the army, came, hoping that in some way 
it might have happened that he could tell 


142 


PETER 4ND POLLY. 


them of their welfare. Parson Piper hurried 
in, impatient to learn how the late action of 
the New Hampshire Convention was regarded 
by military men ; Mr. Burbean, hearing of his 
arrival, jogged over on his old horse, to ascer- 
tain “if things looked any less dark.” Polly 
plead for him to recount all he knew of the 
sufferings and the courage of her “ favorite 
Arnold ” at the north, and fairly wept over 
the tidings of the death of the beloved Mont- 
gomery ; while Aunt Nancy begged to know 
“ if Washington were not extravagant ; if he 
really had a French cook ; and if Lady Wash- 
ington’s clothes were not unduly fine for a 
patriot’s wife.” For, since she had felt com- 
pelled to wear only homespun herself, she had 
grown severe in her judgment of all display in 
others, though still as fond, in her heart, of 
elegant adornings as she had been in her 
gayest days. 

But, while making himself hoarse in talking 
of army matters, Dr. Austin’s thought was, 


PETER AND POLLY. 


143 


all the while, busy, pondering what he should 
do with his children. Peter and Polly, who 
had been educated to regard the decision of 
their elders with submission, and who shrank 
from coming to their father with their discon- 
tents, made no complaints ; yet as, on asking 
Peter “ what progress he had made in his 
studies,” Dr. Austin found that he had been 
too busy in his uncle’s store to give them any 
attention, and as Polly, whose midnight vigils 
in the haunted bedroom, and whose close con- 
finement, all day in the house, told so plainly 
on her appearance, that she looked more like 
a young spectre than a blooming girl, and 
sadly down-hearted as well, he began to feel 
dissatisfied himself, and to wish he could find 
some other place for them both. The more 
he thought of the matter, the more indignant 
he became, especially in regard to Peter ; for 
he had sent, with the children, explicit direc- 
tions regarding his education, and had for- 
warded, besides, a considerable sum of money 


144 


PETER AND POLLY. 


in silver, which he thought would be more 
than sufficient to pay all expenses for a con- 
siderable time. Mr. Philbrick’s conduct, un- 
der these circumstances, seemed to him not 
only a selfish and unwise course toward Peter, 
but a breach of faith as regarded himself, and 
he felt little inclined to continue in the keep- 
ing of his brother-in-law the charge he had 
intrusted to him. 

As for his sister, since she left her father’s 
house, a bride, in whose beauty he felt a con- 
scious pride, child though he was, he had seen 
her but a few brief times, when, still hand- 
some, well dressed, prosperous, and chancing 
to allude only to subjects on which they were 
agreed, he had seen nothing in her to criticise. 
Now, for the first time, he realized that she 
was lacking in that tenderness of feeling and 
that candor of judgment so essential to mak- 
ing her a gentle companion or a wise adviser 
for young people. To take his children again 
to Massachusetts, had it been desirable, would 


PETER AND POLLY. 


*45 


now have been almost an impossibility ; and 
when Polly besought of him (the only request 
she made) that he would arrange with her 
Aunt Nancy for her to be allowed to visit 
Cousin Keziah, it seemed to open the only 
possible way out of his difficulties. To be 
sure, he realized, when, a few hours later, he 
took his horse and rode over to Miss Hap- 
good’s house alone, that it was a very rough 
and common place, where hard work had 
filled so much of the time that there was 
little space left for those small refinements of 
life that add so much to its beauty and its 
pleasure ; that the neighbors round were un- 
educated, hard-handed toilers for their daily 
bread ; that his children, if placed there, would 
be shut out from most that the world calls 
best ; and yet, when he rode back, he had 
decided, with Miss Hapgood’s consent, that 
at least for the summer they should both be 
put at board with her : Peter to be taught to 
assist, as he could, every day, in light labor 


146 


PETER AND POLLY. 


about the farm, and once or twice each week 
to recite to Parson Piper, with whom Dr. 
Austin soon made arrangements for his son’s 
instruction ; and Polly to be made familiar with 
knitting, sewing, and household duties. “At 
Cousin Keziah’s,” thought Dr. Austin, “if 
Peter rarely even sees a man of quality and 
culture, and if Polly fails to learn to make 
a graceful courtesy, or entertain a polished 
beau with ease, and has none of the studied 
prettinesses that make her sex so charming in 
modish society, they will, at least, be taught to 
speak the honest truth, to be patient and pure- 
hearted and brave and self-reliant, and will be 
rich in virtues, if time should make them poor 
in purse.” 

“ Well,” said Aunt Nancy, when, as adroitly 
as he was able, her brother informed her that, 
since she had been burdened with the care of 
his children for some time, he was now intend- 
ing to place them, for a season, with his wife’s 
cousin, Miss Hapgood, — “ well, every one to 


PETER AND POLLY. 


'47 


his tastes ; but,” she added with some asper- 
ity, “ I must say, Brother Peter, yours are ex- 
ceeding singular, and as for Keziah Hapgood, 
she may in the first have had some birth and 
breeding, but she has thrown herself away 
for people who are neither kith nor kin to 
her.” 

“Well, Nancy,” returned her brother, “ better 
give our lives away to others than waste them 
on ourselves ; otherwise, why worship as we 
do that Life which was wholly sacrifice ? ” 

“That ’s no reason for Keziah’s doing as 
she does,” said his sister, contemptuously, and 
with a shade of anger in her tone, for she was 
unaccustomed to having others dissent from 
her opinions. “ As for your putting Polly with 
her, after you have said you would like to have 
her learn to behave as a high-bred, genteel 
young woman in society should do, it is some- 
thing I wash my hands of. I was n’t for hav- 
ing her visit them at all.” 

Miss Hapgood had, in her childhood, be- 


148 


PETER AND POLLY. 


longed to a substantial family in Haverhill, 
Massachusetts, at whose home Polly’s mother, 
a fair young orphan, was a frequent guest ; 
but, on her parents’ death, the affections of 
Keziah settled on a sister, the last of the 
household except herself, a pretty and impul- 
sive girl, who, at the age of sixteen, made a 
somewhat venturous marriage with a young 
man whose only property consisted of some 
wild lands in New Hampshire. Keziah could 
not bear the thought of leaving the child-wife 
to meet, unshared by her, the hardships of a 
settler’s life ; so, gathering together what she 
judged would be of most service, and putting 
a sad-iron, two candlesticks, a silver teapot, — 
brought by her grandmother from England, 
— and a small brass kettle in the saddle-bags 
with her clothes, and, woman-like, hiding, in 
the bosom of her gown, six daffodil bulbs 
and a packet of balsam and sweet-william 
seeds, she had bidden friends and familiar 
scenes farewell, and, mounted on her stout 


PETER AND POLLY. 


149 


gray mare, had followed the young groom and 
bride, who rode in front of her, to their new 
home. 

A perilous way it was, through the solemn 
woods, the spotted trees alone enabling them 
to keep in their path ; and a hard life awaited 
them in the rough log-house that, after a few 
weeks’ delay at the crowded home of a set- 
tler, ten miles distant, was erected for them. 
Often, in the few years that followed, the howl 
of the hungry wolf was heard about their 
sheepfold, the black bears prowled about their 
fields of corn, and straggling Indians, mad 
with fire-water, thumped, at midnight, on their 
cabin door. Drought and flood and army- 
worm had spoiled their crops, and, last of all, 
sickness had entered their low door, and in a 
pine coffin, made by the husband’s own hands, 
the young wife had been borne out, to sleep in 
peace beneath the tall oaks in the then newly 
made graveyard. 

At first Keziah was compelled to stay to 


PETER AND POLLY. 


150 

care for her sister’s infant, a puny little thing, 
that soon followed its mother ; but when the 
child had died she thought to leave, and might 
have done so, only, just as she had begun to 
make preparations to go, her brother-in-law 
had been killed by the falling of a tree which 
he was cutting, leaving, with no one to protect 
them, his old mother and a sister by no means 
firm in health, who had come to stay with 
him. 

Keziah, always equal to emergencies, had 
then bought the place for herself, invited both 
mother and sister to live with her, and carried 
on affairs by her own right and in her own 
way, meeting, too, with much success ; for, as 
all who knew her said, “she had a shrewd 
head-piece, and her heart was as strong as 
her hands.” New settlers had come in, and 
she now found herself the owner of a well-cul- 
tivated farm in a prosperous township. She 
had had a new house erected, which, for the 
time, was well furnished and comfortable. Her 


PETER AND POLLY. 


151 

apple-orchard of grafted fruit, Holland pippins 
and blue pearmains, belibonds and summer 
sweetings, was the marvel of the country" 
round. She sent twenty miles, over the rough- 
est of roads, to procure a linen foot-wheel, 
before they had come into general use ; and 
the sister of her brother-in-law, who lived with 
her, being a famous spinner and weaver, had 
filled for her great chests with the finest linen 
and the softest wool. 

Like most women who have made their way 
in the world by their own sagacity, industry, 
and prudence, Miss Keziah was somewhat self- 
conscious of the fact. She was an ardent 
friend of liberty, was zealous for all moral re- 
forms, and interested in all modern improve- 
ments, and was never ' afraid to advance her 
opinions, which, fortunately, were commonly 
expressed with wisdom and always with kind- 
ness. 

Polly, when she began to pack her bag to 
leave her Aunt Nancy’s, was surprised to find, 


152 


PETER AND POLLY. 


on looking over her clothes, that all her silk 
stockings, save that unlucky pair she had worn 
to ride in, were missing ; and where was the 
little blue-bordered handkerchief, and her best 
tucker with'- the lace edge? And, worse than 
all, where was the little mourning-necklace 
that her father gave her at her mother’s fu- 
neral ? 

She did not quite dare to go with the ac- 
count, as she should have done, to her Aunt 
Nancy ; for the thought of her nephew and 
niece being willing to leave her for Miss Hap- 
good had so irritated her somewhat uncertain 
temper, that she was doubly fault-finding. She 
did ask Beck, who said, “ Well, there ! I 
never thought any good would come of your 
sleeping in that chamber over the grave- 
yard!” 

A dreadful suspicion came to Polly. “ Do 
you think, Peter,” she asked, when she chanced 
to see him alone, “that it is possible that Beck 
can have been so wicked as to meddle with my 


PETER AND POLLY. 


153 


clothes?” And Peter had answered, “You 
don’t know, Polly, anything about this world, 
if you have n’t learned it ’s a very bad place. 
Why, it ’s quite monstrous, the way Uncle 
Abel waters his rum ! ” 




CHAPTER VIII. 
COMFORTABLE, two-storied house, 



ii painted red, was Miss Keziah’s, with a 
promise of more room on the outside than was 
fulfilled within, as the large central chimney 
took up space enough for one good-sized 
apartment, and only the rooms on the ground- 
floor were finished. But a pleasant, peaceful 
place it seemed to Polly, when she came to it 
as her new home, one bright morning in the 
last of April. In front, the fields sloped down 
toward the river-bank, where, on the interval 
lands, the flax was planted : on one side were 
cultivated fields ; on the other was the or- 
chard, and then a chestnut grove ; while, in 
the rear, stretched back the “ wood-lot,” as 


PETER AND POLLY. 


155 


Miss Keziah called the large tract of primeval 
forest of which she was the owner. Bright in 
the little flower-bed, under the windows of the 
house looking southward, was a line of golden 
daffodils, just coming into bloom, children of 
those Miss Keziah had brought from her early- 
home, and whispering to her of hope, and 
childhood, and “ old Haverhill.” A log- 
cabin, with only two rooms, to which she had 
come with her newly married sister, stood 
only a few rods away, now occupied by a man 
who helped cultivate her farm, and who, with- 
in three miles, was her only neighbor. 

“ Your only neighbor ! ” exclaimed Polly, in 
surprise, the day she came; for there was some- 
thing in that quiet farm-house that took away 
the sense of loneliness. 

Out in the kitchen the blaze in the broad 
fireplace was dancing and crackling around 
the little kettle that hung on the crane, giving 
out a delightful “ woodsy ” smell, and a short- 
cake was growing deliciously brown and crisp 


156 


PETER AND POLLY. 


in a great iron pan in front of the fire ; for it 
was just supper-time when Peter and Polly 
and their saddle-bags appeared at Miss Hap- 
good’s door. 

An old woman, dressed in butternut brown, 
and with two shawls pinned' one over the 
other, sat, mild though the day was, in a low 
chair in the warmest corner of the hearth ; 
and a pale woman of about thirty, in a long 
checked “ tyer ” of blue and white, and a 
knot of u may -flowers ” fastened in her bosom, 
was spinning on a large wheel that made a 
cheery, whirring sound, and went round as if 
it had a half-consciousness that it was doing 
service, and thought making woollen yarn the 
most delightful thing imaginable. 

The table was already spread with rye bread 
and fresh butter, and some cold vegetables 
on a pewter platter that shone like silver, 
and furnished with plates and bowls turned 
(as the best wooden ware was) from the 
gnarled roots of the yellow ash, horn spoons, 


PETER AND POLLY. 


157 


and a charming little pitcher, doubtless from 
“old Haverhill,” all roses without and ma- 
ple sirup within. Polly noticed her wooden 
plates. She had never been accustomed to 
eating from anything but stone or pewter 
ware, save on fine occasions, when she had 
lost all thought of her food in her admiration 
of the pictures on her mother’s and her Aunt 
Nancy’s best china. 

“ Come, Judith,” said Miss Keziah, turning 
to the pale spinner, “you have stood too long 
at the wheel already. If you have no judg- 
ment when to leave off, you must quit spin- 
ning altogether, for you are tired out.” 

The pale woman made no reply, only she 
smiled gently at Polly, and, putting away the 
soft white rolls in a flag basket, set noise- 
lessly back the wheel in the corner of the 
room. A quiet creature, like a voiceless bird, 
she seemed to Polly, who wondered if she ever 
could understand what a restless person like 
herself endured ; for Polly, like most “ little 


158 


PETER AND POLLY. 


women ” of fourteen, had a vivid idea of her 
troubles, and thought it probable few young 
people had ever suffered so much. 

“ This checkerberry has boiled ! ” said Miss 
Keziah, as she took the kettle from the fire, 
and proceeded to fill a little silver teapot, 
which was the only thing with any preten- 
sions to splendor in the house. “ Boil check- 
erberry-leaves, and all their virtue goes ! ” 

“ I am thinking,” she began, when, having 
said grace standing, they were all seated at 
the table, and the old grandmother had been 
drawn up to it in her arm-chair, — “I am 
thinking, Judith, I mean to try first one thing 
and then another, of the green things growing 
this summer, and some time we shall hit on 
something as good, if not better, than the 
China tea. This is a great country, and 
everything discoverable ain’t found out yet. 
We need n’t be dependent on any other na- 
tion.” Miss Keziah, like most women of char- 
acter, had her hobbies, and, just then, her 


PETER AND POLLY. 


159 


“country’s greatness,” and her “country’s 
cause,” so filled her heart, that in all her 
houshold talk there was sure to be some 
allusion to the one or the other. 

“ I have forgotten how China tea tastes,” 
said Peter, “and I never drank checkerberry ; 
but I have had enough of balm and sage and 
mountain-mint and sweet-fern and catnip.” 

“ I like them every one,” returned Miss 
Keziah ; “ there is a flavor of freedom in 
them all.” 

“ Freedom ’s well enough,” put in old Mrs. 
Potter, Judith’s mother, who was apparently 
somewhat broken and childish, “ but I ’d give 
a good deal for a cup of old-fashioned tea, for 
all that ! Now when Deliverance Hobbs and 
I were gals, and shet up in the garrison, the 
food was growin’ skurse, and the meat was 
gone ; but Deliverance had a pound of tea of 
her own, and when the men were out watchin’ 
on the sentry-boxes for Injuns, we’d brew a 
cup, and it would stay our stomachs and cheer 


i6o 


PETER AND POLLY. 


our spirits, both in one. Your medder-grown 
stuff would n’t do that, Keziah. And as for 
potatoes,” she said, when Judith proceeded to 
help her to that portion of the boiled vege- 
tables, “ I did n’t eat ’em when I was young, 
and I ’m too old to begin now.” 

“ But what should we do without them ? ” 
asked Keziah. “ People are planting more 
ground with them every year. They are a 
sure crop, and a large one, and they do well 
on the new-burnt lands.” 

“ We New Hampshire people ought to be 
grateful to the Derry weavers for two things,” 
said Judith; “for giving us potatoes to eat, 
and for teaching us how to use the linen 
foot-wheel. It ’s a good deal the Scotch Irish 
have done for us.” 

It was the longest sentence that Polly had 
heard her speak, and she noticed that her 
voice was feeble. 

Just then there was a tap at the side door, 
and Polly glanced up as Miss Keziah rose to 


PETER AND POLLY. 


i6r 


open it. There stood her old friend, the shoe- 
maker’s apprentice, in a checked tow frock, 
drawn around him with a leather belt, a big 
and battered cocked hat, which evidently had 
known some former owner, on his head, and 
his arms full of sassafras branches, which he 
had brought as a tribute to Miss Keziah. 

“ Come in, Rob ; come in, and have some 
supper,” said Miss Hapgood ; but the boy, 
seeing less familiar faces than her own, drew 
back, bashful and blushing. 

“But you must,” said Miss Keziah, laying 
her hand on his shoulder like one accustomed 
to control. “ Come in, and tell us how you 
are getting on.” 

“ O, as usual,” answered the boy in a low 
tone ; and Polly looked at him with a pity 'she 
could not express, for “what a dreary thing,” 
she thought, “ his ‘ usual ’ life must be ! ” 

Miss Keziah would not take “ No.” She 
brought another bowl and plate, and quite 
forced the shy boy, who had come in and sat 


PETER AND POLLY. 


162 

down on one end of the long settle at the 
side of the room, to take his place with them 
at the table. “You shall have one quiet 
supper, at least,” she said. 

“ I have had a pleasant day, to-day,” said 
Rob, “walking through the woods. He let 
me carry Mr. Burbean’s shoes home, as, in- 
deed, he ought, for the man had been for them 
seven times, and he would neither cut the 
uppers himself, or let me do it ; but, on the 
way, I saw some sassafras, and thought you 
might like some.” 

“You are in a hard place, Rob ! ” said Miss 
Keziah, thoughtfully, as if she were trying to 
solve a problem in her mind. 

“ But as long as I am a ’prentice I won’t 
complain,” said Rob ; “ he ’s my master till I 
am free.” 

“ And you are growing now ! ” put in Polly, 
ready to speak, and remembering his own 
words of self-consolation. 

Peter looked at her with reproving eyes ; it 


PETER AND POLLY. 


163 


seemed a very pert speech for his sister to be 
making to a stranger ; but the boy glanced up 
with a smile that seemed foreign to his earnest, 
serious face. 

“ Miss Keziah,” he said, at last, — and Polly 
noticed that he was too preoccupied to more 
than taste the food on his bountifully filled 
plate, — “I want to ask you, — what do you 
think ? does one man have as good a right to 
his freedom as another, as people are saying 
now ? ” 

“Of course I do,” answered Miss Keziah. 
“Is n’t that what we are fighting for?” 

The boy said nothing more, but, sitting 
quietly, like one accustomed to keeping his 
thoughts to himself, “ Yes, madam,” and “ No, 
madam,” he replied to the questions asked 
him, and, when supper was over, he left imme- 
diately. 

“ A hard life he has, a hard life,” repeated 
Miss Keziah to Peter and Polly, as she watched 
him while he took the shortest way to reach 


164 


PETER AND POLLY. 


the village, through the fields and pastures. 
“ He is one of the best and kindest lads in the 
world, but to-day he is down-hearted. Per- 
haps it was seeing you young folks with better 
advantages than himself, for rough days he 
must have with shoemaker Dow, who cares 
for nothing but drinking-bouts and wrestling- 
matches, and has always had the name of 
being a cruel master with his ’prentices. Rob 
clings to me, for he knows I was a friend to 
his mother,” she added. “ She and his father 
had known better days, but anxiety and pov- 
erty and disappointment wore them both out 
at last ! ” 

“ O, yes ! I believe — I am quite sure — I 
have heard their story,” exclaimed Polly, all 
alive with interest ; “ and,” she continued, 
with a sentimental air, “ don’t you think this 
‘ Rob,’ as you call him, has a way as if he were 
born for better things ? A sad look, as if he 
were a prince who had been shut up in a dun- 
geon, and yet a proud, daring one, as though 


PETER AND POLLY. 


165 


he might make a great hero, noble and brave, 
like Benedict Arnold ? ” 

“He is a truthful, well-meaning young fel- 
low,” said Miss Keziah. “ He makes a better 
shoe now than his master does, and, considering 
what he has been through, he has done well.” 

Polly breathed, that summer, in deed and 
truth, the air of freedom. Miss Keziah had 
the entire control of the farm and all its be- 
longings ; for Job Hart, the new hired man 
(her former well-trained one having gone to 
the war), was only a feeble instrument in her 
hands ; and she was so very busy, body and 
soul, that she had little time for the close 
supervision of such apparently correct young 
people as Peter and Polly. “ And I ’ve been 
thinkinj^lsfhe said, by way of self-excuse, “ that 
there may be such a thing as holding in young 
folks a little too close ; a colt won’t do the 
better for being always kept tied with a halter.” 

“ Tied with a halter ” Polly certainly was 
not. Over hill and dale, through wood and 


PETER AND POLLY. 


1 66 


glen, by meadow-pool and singing brook, 
startling the ground-bird from her fern-hid 
nest, peering into the shady thicket, where 
the catbird brooded on her emerald eggs, 
chasing the orange butterflies, and twining 
wreaths of violets and pale wood-lilies, she 
wandered at her will, only hedged in by the 
fear of losing her way, and the dread of the 
gray wolves and the brown bears, that still 
now and then, though not frequently, were 
seen. 

“And I guess, if you once had had a moun- 
tain-cat’s teeth in you, you would not be quite 
so daring ! ” said Peter, who sometimes wearied 
of his sister’s importunities for him to accom- 
pany her upon her rambles. 

But O, they were so fair, the great prime- 
val woods, the fresh, new-broken fields, where 
the sun shone, and the birds sang, — how could 
she stay within ? She used to wonder at the 
quiet Judith, who seemed never to care to 
cross the threshold, save to go to the meeting 


PETER AND POLLY. 


1 6 7 


on Sunday, and to watch the growth of the 
ragged pinks, and marigolds, and lady’s-de- 
lights, in the little flower-bed nestled under 
one of the windows ; but always, when she 
was not ill, was busy at the great wool or 
the linen wheel, or carding tow or wool on the 
hand-cards, or knitting, or weaving at the 
loom set up in one end of the long kitchen. 

“ A dull life she leads, with no one to talk 
to, when we are out, but her old mother,” 
thought Polly, who took more pleasure in the 
company of the lively, outspoken Miss Keziah, 
who, like herself, was always ready to find 
some excuse for being out of doors. She often 
accompanied her in her rides about the farm, 
sometimes sitting behind her on the old gray 
horse, sometimes mounted in the cart drawn 
by an immense pair of oxen, — the same kind 
of cattle which Captain John Mason brought 
over in 1633, “to stock the plantations and 
assist in drawing lumber ” ; big, yellow, intelli- 
gent creatures, that were counted marvels even 


PETER AND POLLY. 


1 68 


then, when large, strong oxen held the same 
comparative place that thorough-bred horses 
do to-day. 

Miss Keziah was a wise woman in sickness. 
For years she was the only “cure-all” the 
little community round her knew, and now, 
when any of her old acquaintance were taken 
ill, they were sure to send for her to come to 
them. All her prescriptions were of roots or 
herbs, but her gifts of healing were quite as 
great as the village doctor’s, who, in truth, 
physicked and bled his patients most unmerci- 
fully. Under her instructions, Polly grew rich 
in woodland lore, and seldom came back to 
the house without having her arms full of 
boughs and herbs, and roots and flowers, which, 
whatever they were, the good doctress without 
a title always assured her were of almost price- 
less worth in some form of disease. Witch- 
hazel branches and jewel-weeds, wild-currants 
from the swamp and white-balm from the 
sunny hills, gold-thread roots and violet flow- 


PETER AND POLLY. 


169 


ers, Indian-turnips and Solomon’s-seals, all 
alike were precious to Cousin Keziah. 

What sweet odors came, at night, to Polly, 
as she lay in her little unfinished chamber, 
that opened into a wide waste-room, with floor 
of loosely laid boards, where these woodland 
stores were dried and kept ! 

Somehow, her old fears all vanished in that 
little room ; Cousin Keziah’s cheery, sustain- 
ing presence in the house, and the gentle 
smile of the calm, patient Judith, had put them 
all to flight ! 

A small, ill-lighted room it was, with an un- 
curtained bed, corded with elm-bark, a common 
substitute for hemp in cording beds in those 
days, and with a stout little feather-bed, which 
Miss Keziah had made from the feathers of 
many kinds of birds, which had been caught 
about her premises, in the various traps and 
snares then in frequent use for procuring 
game, or destroying the winged robbers of the 
hen-roosts and poultry-yards. “ There is noth- 


170 


PETER AND POLLY. 


ing a new settler needs so much as a saving 
disposition,” said Miss Hapgood ; and, accord- 
ingly, hawks’ feathers and pigeons’, the snow 
from the owl’s breast and sable from the 
crow’s neck, the wood-duck’s dainty dress and 
the shy partridge’s speckled plumage, all alike 
had gone to fill the coarse tow sacking that 
covered them. Lying on that little bed, whose 
sheets and “ pillow-beeres ” smelt of lavender 
and sweet-grass, Polly forgot all her witch ter- 
rors, and dreamed only the happy visions of 
innocence and health. 

It was a warm midsummer morning, scarcely 
nine o’clock, and yet the dew was dry upon 
the grass. Outside the door, in the shade 
of a great red-oak, Miss Keziah, Judith, Polly, 
even old Mrs. Potter herself, were sitting, 
picking wool, for it was after the sheep-shear- 
ing, and a “ monstrous busy time,” Keziah said. 
It was not very pleasant work, handling the 
soiled fleeces, and pulling from them the 
sticks and burs ; but Polly entered into it 


PETER AND POLLY. 


171 


with a will, for it was easy enough, and she 
was ready to assist whenever she could do 
so. 

All four of the women were dressed alike, 
in long blue “ tyers,” that covered them from 
neck to heels ; and Mrs. Job Hart, the wife of 
the hired man, had come over “ to assist,” as 
she said, bringing in her arms a very fretful 
baby, with a grimy cap. 

“ This wool,” said Polly, beginning at last 
to grow impatient, “ is quite full of those abom- 
inable, worthless burdock-burs ! ” 

“ Worthless ? O, no ! ” exclaimed Miss Ke- 
ziah ; “ their seeds are the best thing in the 
world for a weak stomach.” 

“Yes,” put in Mrs. Potter, “as long ago as 
I was a gal in the garrison, there was a woman 
there that was ailing, and — ” 

“There’s Peter, coming back through the 
meadow, tearing along like mad! — there’s 
something happened ! ” burst forth Polly ; for, 
an hour before, Peter had started to go to 


172 


PETER AND POLLY. 


Parson Piper’s, it being one of his recitation- 
days. 

“ The old mare must be stuck in the bog, — 
Oh ! ” cried Miss Keziah, starting up ; for for- 
mer trials had made this vision a constant 
terror to her. 

“ And she won’t get out, this time, I ’m 
thinking,” said Judith. 

“And just as I had learned to ride bare- 
back,” moaned Polly ; “ it ’s too bad ! ” 

“ There ’s news ! There ’s news ! ” shouted 
Peter, hoarsely, hurrying so fast that, when 
he reached them, he dropped down in their 
midst, too much out of breath to speak. 

“ The mare ? ” asked Keziah. 

“ The Gen-eral Con-gress,” gasped Peter. 
“ They ’ve drawn up a paper — and signed it, 
and we ain’t under King George, or Great 
Britain, any more. We ’re ‘ free and inde- 
pendent States,’ and we’re going to fight for 
ourselves ! ” 

“ Thank the Lord ! ” said Miss Keziah. 


PETER AND POLLY. 


1 73 


“And the men who did it, too,” suggested 
Polly. 

“ No, no,” returned the other, who was no 
man-worshipper, “ they were only poor cree- 
turs, doing His bidding ; to him be all the 
glory ! But there is one thing,” she declared, 
“ there sha’ n’t be any more work done to- 
day” 

“But it is a pity not,” expostulated Judith. 
“ Tabby Burbean said she would come over 
with her cards, and help us, as soon as the 
wool could be got ready.” 

“ Tabby Burbean or not,” said Keziah, “ no 
more work shall be done to-day ! ” And, as she 
spoke, she laid hold of the big basket of wool 
with both hands, to carry it away ; “ such 
news as this ain’t heard more’n once in a 
hundred years; it isn’t the time to work, 
more ’n on Sunday. I am going to get ready 
and go over to the village ; perhaps I shall 
hear more.” 

“ And I too ! ” exclaimed Polly ; “ and I will 


174 


PETER AND POLLY. 


wear my best clothes ; I ’m sure I have noth- 
ing good enough to put on. — Did you know/' 
she said, snatching up the Hart baby in its 
grimy cap, — “did you know there wasn’t any 
old king over you any more ! ” At which the 
baby, startled by her unmaternal manner of 
tossing up, sent forth such a doleful cry, that 
Polly dropped him in his mother’s arms, and 
pulled off, in a trice, her long-sleeved “ tyer,” 
as her first preparation for honoring the day. 

How bright she looked, as she started for 
the village, with Miss Keziah, Peter, Mrs. 
Hart, and the baby, all in the ox-cart together! 
Her eyes shone, and her ear-rings trembled, 
and she was decked with all the finery she 
possessed ; for Miss Keziah was as indulgent 
in regard to her dress as her Aunt Nancy 
had been strict. “ Wear out your foreign rigs 
and have some good plain homespun ones,” 
she had advised ; but Polly had a prudent re- 
gard for the welfare of her best clothes, and 
seldom donned them, save on Sundays. 


PETER AND POLLY. 


175 


Mrs. Hart, too, had put a pair of patched 
shoes on her stockingless red feet, and the 
baby shone forth with a washed face and a 
clean cap. “ I tried to make myself look kind 
o’ decent,” she said, “ though what I ’m goin’ 
for, I don’t know. The ‘ Gineral Congress/ 
as you call it, and King George, it ’s all one to 
me ; but I guess Job knows sumthin’ about it. 
Leastways, he said, ‘ Go with ’em, Susanna.’ 
But there ! if I can get the garden hoed, and 
sumthin’ to eat, and enough cloth made for 
Job a coat and breeches, and some stockings 
knit, so our feet won’t freeze next winter, it 
will be all the independence I want, seems 
if!” 

Polly shrugged her pretty shoulders, under 
her gay pink and yellow flowered necker- 
chief. A woman with no more patriotism 
seemed to her unworthy to live at such a 
time ; and a mother who would let her infant 
be seen, even at home, with a dirty face and 
a grimy cap was even lower in the scale 


176 


PETER AND POLLY. 


of existence. “ Really, old Buck and Bright 
were almost her equals,” she thought. She 
got down from the cart, and, as she walked, 
she gathered wild grape-vine, and the great 
rosy blossoms of the red mulberry, and, weav- 
ing long garlands, hung them about their necks, 
like triumphal wreaths. “ Hurrah ! old Buck 
and Bright ! ” called Peter as she did so. 
“ You’ll never draw any of the king’s lumber 
any more ! ” 

“ And the great pines ! ” said Keziah, point- 
ing to two towering forest sentinels, with 
“ G. R.” cut upon them ; “ the king’s mark 
will never be put upon another ! ” 

When they reached the village, they found 
it all alive with excitement. The narrow 
street was full of people. “ Uncle Abel’s store 
is shut up ! ” said Peter. The tavern was 
deserted, the dwelling-houses closed. Mr. 
Philbrick and his wife were coming down the 
long path that led to their house. Peter and 
Polly, who had dismounted from the cart, and 


PETER AND POLLY. 


1 77 


were walking, stopped to speak to them. 
“ The * Declaration * has come, and Parson 
Piper is going to read it in front of the meet- 
ing-house/’ said Aunt Nancy, casting her eyes 
over Polly’s clothes, with a half-scornful, half- 
reproachful expression. 

“And I, for one, am glad of it,” said Mr. 
Burbean, who had joined them. “ Things 
look dark, but it is a little comfort to know 
where we stand. We hain’t seemed to belong 
anywhere for some time.” 

“ That is true,” responded Mr. Philbrick ; 
“a man begins to know where he is, but 
whether things will be any better than they 
have been remains to be seen. It ’s a hard 
thing to carry on a war with a nation like 
Great Britain, and be as poor as this country 
is. We can’t tell,” he continued, with anxiety 
in his tone. His business perplexities already 
wore upon his looks, though, after all, he was 
not without hope in a new quarter, having 
invested somewhat largely with a company 


i 7 8 


PETER AND POLLY . 


in an enterprise for the manufacture of salt- 
petre, so necessary in time of war. “Now 
we are in for the contest, we must fight it 
through,” he said. 

Into the green space around the meeting- 
house every one was pressing, men, women, 
and children, — and what a brood of children 
there were ! Bareheaded, their sunburnt hair 
flying about their faces, brown with tan or 
yellow with freckles, with coarse tow frocks 
and uncovered feet, but singularly quiet and 
docile. Parson Piper was all awake ; his 
eyes gleamed like stars ; his face glowed like 
flame ; he carried his head, with its snow- 
white wig, with an air of triumph ; he moved 
among his flock with a word for each, and 
every one made him obeisance on beholding 
him. “ This is a time that will come back 
to you when you are an old man,” he said, 
patting on the head little Jabez Burbean, a 
stout child with a great piece of short-cake. 

“ Ah, Miss Hapgood ! ” he asked, when he 


PETER AND POLLY. 


179 


came on Cousin Keziah, “ don’t you see how 
Scripture ’s coming true, ? — ‘ A nation shall be 
born in a day ’ ? And what a day it is ! ” 

Not till all had gathered together, and he 
had offered thanks, did he read the “ Declara- 
tion,” which from the nearest shire- town an 
express-post had brought, at almost break- 
neck speed. 

How gloriously they sounded, when for the 
first time those words were heard : “ We 
hold these truths to be self-evident : that all 
men are created equal, that they are endowed 
by their Creator with certain unalienable 
rights ; that among these are life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness.” 

Scripture-taught Miss Keziah, as she lis- 
tened, thought of Miriam’s song of victory and 
Deborah’s exultations. Whatever were her 
present trials, whatever conflicts lay before 
her, she felt our land had indeed “ triumphed 
gloriously,,” since Freedom’s voice had here 
found so full and clear an utterance. 


i8o 


PETER AND POLLY. 


When the reading was finished, Polly no- 
ticed the men consulting amongst themselves. 
“ The town-powder ! ” said one ; “ The town- 
powder ! ” returned another, “just to make a 
noise, when every grain may be needed to 
fight with ! ” 

A tall boy with dark hair came rushing up 
the street with a stout pole in his hand, fol- 
lowed by half a dozen others similarly equipped. 
Across the street, with a field between, rose an 
abrupt hill, so steep that it was hard to clam- 
ber up its ledgy side. Polly saw that the 
leader was Rob Millin, whom she had seen at 
the shoemaker’s window as she came past, 
busily stitching, though every one else seemed 
out of doors ; but even he had broken loose at 
last. He led the way, and up the sloping 
field, up the rocky hillside, clutching at the 
bushes and saplings to hold on, the others 
pressed close after. Polly watched them, won- 
dering what they were about. By and by she 
lost sight of them, and presently half a dozen 


PETER AND POLLY. 


181 


other lads, all with iron bars or poles, were 
seen climbing the hill in another place. 

There was a little delay, and then, crash ! 
Breaking the bushes, snapping the young ash- 
trees, loosening the smaller rocks and stones, 
a giant bowlder came rushing down the steep 
hill ! Faster and faster, gathering force, it 
plunged along. Every eye was on it. “So 
fall our country’s enemies ! ” said Parson 
Piper. 

Long after it reached the bottom of the hill, 
it rolled forward by its own force, but at last, 
in the green field, just opposite the place of 
worship, it ceased to move. “ There let it 
remain, a monument forever ! ” said Parson 
Piper; and loud hurrahs rang on the air, from 
the crowd lingering around the meeting- 
house. 

“ Come, Polly,” said Miss Keziah, when this 
exploit was over, and she had had a word with 
her numerous acquaintances, — “come, Polly ; 
it is time we were going.” And Polly, with re- 


PETER AND POLLY. 


1 82 

luctant face, gave her assent. Mrs. Hart and 
the crying baby were already in the ox-cart 
when they reached it, but Peter was among 
the missing. They found him, at last, by the 
tavern, where all the boys had gathered, to 
look at poor George the Third hanging igno- 
miniously, with his head downward, as he 
swung from the high sign-post ; while, on an 
open space near by, they were collecting to- 
gether candle-wood and brush, in large quan- 
tities, to make, when evening came, a magnifi- 
cent illumination. “A splendid spectacle,” 
Polly thought, “ which she must return to the 
farm, and leave entirely unseen ! ” 

“And to-morrow night,” said Peter, pulling 
away a half-withered garland from the neck of 
one of the yellow oxen, “ there is to be a grand 
dance at the tavern.” 

“ O, let us go ! ” cried Polly ; “ may we not, 
Cousin Keziah ? ” 

“You can’t dance,” said Peter. 

“ O, but I can,” said Polly ; “ I know by the 


PETER AND POLLY. 


1 33 


feeling in my feet when I hear the music ; I 
could dance, just as a robin sings or a swallow 
flies.” 

“ And queer dancing it would be,” said 
Peter ; “ but if you could, you are not invited.” 

‘‘And you are too young to go if you were,” 
said Cousin Keziah. “ They are getting too 
lax here about times and seasons, and it won’t 
anyways do for young folks like you to be out 
after nine o’clock. The last ball I went to 
was when Parson Piper was ordained. All 
the ministers from the country round were in 
town. Old Parson Swan preached in the 
afternoon, on the final judgment, a fearful, 
solemn sermon, and in the evening there was 
a ball that was a ball. Parson Piper opened 
it with prayer, and your Aunt Philbrick was 
there, in a pink and white brocade, and her 
husband in a blue satin waistcoat wrought 
all over with green and scarlet vines and 
flowers.” 

“ O, how lovely ! how lovely it must have 


1 84 


PETER AND POLLY. 


been ! ” sighed Polly. “ But / never can see 
anything ! O dear ! ” From what ecstatic 
pleasures she was shut out ! she thought, as 
she rode home in the jolting old ox-cart. 

Peter had been permitted to spend the night 
at Parson Piper s, and go and see the great 
bonfire. It was hard that, at least, that privi- 
lege did not fall to her lot. She wished her 
Aunt Nancy would have asked her to spend 
the night at her house. She would almost 
have slept in the ghost-chamber, if she could 
have had a glimpse of the festal illuminations 
beforehand. Miss Keziah was too much ab- 
sorbed by the real issue of the words she had 
heard, to mind the sulky face of the little girl, 
and the Hart baby, worn out by its travels, 
was crying lustily in its mother’s arm. 

“Let me down,” cried Polly, speaking to 
Job Hart, who was walking beside the oxen, 
— “let me down ; I had rather walk.” 

The sky above was rosy with the sunset ; 
the soft wind sang in the boughs; great spotted 


PETER AND POLLY. 


185 


field-lilies nodded here and there beside the 
path ; the air was sweet with the breath of 
clover-bloom and elder ; and the bobolinks 
sang their merriest, down in the meadow, 
where the brook flowed quietly, bordered with 
white-blossomed weeds ; but Polly “ cared for 
none of these things.” Since she could have 
no share in enjoying the fire-works and mer- 
rymakings, what was all the loveliness of 
nature to her? She snapped off the pretty 
yellow lilies impatiently, and broke the great 
elder-clusters and threw them away to wither. 

By and by she heard steps behind her, and, 
looking up, saw her old friend, Rob Millin. 
Pie seemed sad and tired, and, for the first 
time, it struck Polly that her discontent was 
selfishness. 

“ Good day to you,” said the boy, respect- 
fully. 

“ Good day to you," returned Polly. “ I saw 
you out helping roll down the rock, and I was 
so glad that the shoemaker let you go free 


1 86 PETER AND POLLY. 

from your work, and that you could help cele- 
brate.” 

“ I free ? ” answered the other. “ I stole 
the time, and a fool I was to do it, for what ’s 
freedom to me ? I ’m nothing but a slave my- 
self.” 

“ O, yes you are ! or, if you have been, you 
wont be long,” was Polly’s comforting rejoin- 
der. “ But what will the man that has the 
shop say to you ? He can be so dreadful when 
he is angry ! ” 

“ I don’t know what he will say,” answered 
the boy, gloomily ; “ I ’ve seen him ; I know 
what he has said. But I will never stand 
quietly and let him strike me again ; he may 
kill me first — he — may — ” 

The color fled from Polly’s face. The boy 
saw it, and reproached himself. “ Don’t be 
troubled,” he said, “ I ’m sorry I spoke to you 
about it. He has been drinking, and has lost 
money on two Scotch-Irish men that were 
here and had a wrestling-match, and to-mor- 


PETER AND POLLY. 


18/ 

row morning he will be in a better mood, and 
people will be coming to the shop, and I shall 
get clear ; but, just to-night, I would rather 
not meet him. He ’s threatened me ; it ain’t 
the place of a ’prentice to strike back if he ’s 
struck ; and, if it were, he ’s older than I am, 
and stronger. But don’t think of it any more,” 
he said ; “ I ain’t worth it, and ’twill all come 
right.” 

“ But where are you going to stay to-night? ” 
said Polly ; “ O dear ! ” 

“ Stay ? ” answered the boy. “ Is n’t the 
sky big enough to cover me ? and who needs 
any closer roof, such weather as this ? ” 

“ But the wolves ! I should be so afraid to 
be out all night 1 ” said Polly ; “ and these 
hemlock woods, — they look so black and 
frightful!” 

“ As for the wolves,” answered the boy, “ I 
have some tinder and a flint-box with me ; 
I can strike a fire if I hear them howl ; but 
wolves are not the worst things in the world. 


1 88 


PETER AND POLLY. 

If there were more of them I should know 
better what to do. Jack Crullis, — he’s half 
Indian, you know, — he taught me how to bait 
them with mackerel-hooks, and how to make 
wolf-traps out of logs, as the Indians do ; and 
one night I killed two wolves, and if I could 
have had the money for their heads, as I 
ought, they would have brought me as much 
as twenty shillings.” 

“ And did n’t you get it ? ” asked Polly. 

“Get it! Ask Master Dow who had the 
pay for them ! ” said the boy, his cheek flush- 
ing at the memory of his old grievance ; “ I 
had n’t used much of his time setting the 
traps ; I did it when I should have been abed 
and asleep ; this is not the first night I have 
spent in the woods, because his house has 
been too hot to hold me ! But the wolves 
were caught, and I ’d cut off their heads, and 
hoped to get the bounty on them. But what’s 
this to you ? ” he asked, interrupting himself ; 
“ I won’t trouble you any more.” 


189 


PETER AND POLLY, 


“But you must; I want to know,” said 
Polly ; “ what was it ? ” 

“ O, I put them away, both heads, in an 
old basket Jack Crullis gave me, and when I 
went to get them to carry for the bounty, they 
were both gone, and a marten’s skin that I had 
put with them, — that was gone too, — and two 
days after some one was telling how Master 
Dow had killed two wolves and got the prize 
on their heads.” 

“ O, that was too bad ! ” sighed Polly. 

“ But I sold their skins,” said Rob, “ and 
got something for them. If I could set some 
more traps, and have good luck, I should be 
glad, for there ’s a high bounty on wolves, and 
there are some things I want to get.” 

“ What things ? ” said Polly, her curiosity 
getting the better of her politeness. 

The boy hesitated. 

“ I am sorry I asked ; I forgot all my man- 
ners,” apologized Polly. 

“ I want a musket most of anything,” said 
the boy. 


PETER AND POLLY. 


I90 


“ A musket !” repeated Polly. “You have 
no time to go hunting, if you had one, and pow- 
der is so monstrous scarce and dear, besides ! ” 

“ I know it,” returned Rob ; “ but I want a 
musket, for all that, and I ought to have one 
by the law, and a bayonet and a cartridge-box, 
a pound of powder, twenty bullets, and twelve 
flints ; the law would give them to me, for I 
am over sixteen ; but I don’t have them, and 
I sha’ n’t without I earn them, and I mean to 
do it.” 

“ But what do you want of them without 
you can use them ? That is what puzzles 
me,” said Polly. 

The boy smiled. “ You think I had better 
save my money and buy a hat ? ” he asked, 
taking off his battered head-piece. “ Well, 
it is no time I have to earn money now ; so 
it does n’t matter.” 

“ But I can’t bear,” said Polly, “ to have you 
stay out over night in the woods. If you will 
come home with me, my Cousin Keziah will 


PETER AND POLLY. 


IQI 


give you a good supper and a good place to 
sleep in ; I know she will.” 

“ I know she would, too,” said Rob ; “ she 
is the best friend, she is the only friend I have 
in the world ; but I want to trouble no one, 
and I am not afraid ! ” 

“ Cousin Keziah may be your best friend, 
but she is not your only one,” returned Polly, 
a little piqued ; “ I ’m sure I always wished 
you well, ever since the first Sunday I saw 
you at meeting and the tithing-man was so 
unj ust.” 

“ And I ’ve wished you well, too,” responded 
Rob. “ Do you suppose I shall ever forget 
how kindly you spoke to me when you came 
out of meeting there with Miss Hapgood ? ” 

“ But I can’t be happy all night,” said Polly. 
“ I shall think about you and the wolves and 
the bears.” 

“ And I,” said the boy, “ shall be asleep in 
some quiet place, or else I shall sit in the 
moonlight, and work on this.” And he touched, 


192 


PETER AND POLLY. 


as he spoke, a cow’s horn, which, partly fash- 
ioned for use, he had in his hand. 

“ You ’re making a powder-horn to go with 
your musket,” said Polly. 

“ Hush, there ’s some one coming ! ” whis- 
pered the boy. And darting into the deep 
wood, in a moment he was out of sight. 

It was Price Hodgkins, on horseback. 
“Polly !” he called, — for, from being a relation 
of her Uncle Philbrick, he was accustomed to 
seeing her and addressing her by name, — 
“Polly, has your uncle’s maid, Beck, been seen 
up this way ? ” 

“No, sir, not that I know,” answered Polly; 
“ why should she have been ? ” 

“ She ’s missing,” was the answer, “ and a 
good many things are missing with her ; all 
Mrs. Philbrick’s teaspoons and her silver tea- 
pot, and candlesticks, and some Spanish doub- 
loons your uncle had in a bag in a little chest 
in his bedroom, and likely they will find more 
things gone as soon as they can look round” ; 


PETER AND POLLY. 


193 


saying which, he struck his horse and hurried 
along. 

“ Poor Rob ! ” said Miss Keziah, when Polly 
came in with the pitiful account of her walk. 
“ It says, in this new ‘ Declaration,’ that ‘ all 
men are created equal/ but some folks are 
born to pretty hard lots, for all that ; but if 
quick wits and a kind heart are counted in, 
Rob need not stand second to any one.” 

“ I can’t sleep ! ” said Polly, “ I know, to- 
night, for fear the wolves will eat him ; and 
about Aunt Nancy’s teaspoons, you don’t 
know how solemn it seems, somehow, Cousin 
Keziah ! ” 




CHAPTER IX. 

W HAT a winter it was, the gloomy sea- 
son of 1 776 and 1777 ! 

Others than Mr. Burbean looked out with 
dreary forebodings of “ hard times coming.” 
Some, indeed, by the presence of the wolf at 
the door, knew they were already here. 

Poor Mr. Philbrick, mourning over his van- 
ished doubloons, was kept in constant irrita- 
tion by the sight of some debtor, too ready to 
pay, presenting himself with his hands full of 
bills of credit, to refuse which was to have the 
whole debt cancelled ; and yet to accept, unless 
to be used in the same way, was to him nearly 
as trying and unprofitable. 

Aunt Nancy, scouring her own pots and 


PETER AND POLLY. 


195 


pans in place of the lost Beck, whose where- 
abouts were not to be found, and looking at 
the brass candlesticks which took the place 
of her silver ones, grew more and more gloomy 
and dissatisfied, and showed no desire to invite 
back to her home her restless young niece, 
who when with her had been some care and 
little assistance, or to undertake again provid- 
ing three meals a day for “a growing boy” 
like Peter. It was not an easy thing for Mrs. 
Philbrick to find a hired maid to stand in her 
slave-girl’s place. The doctrine of freedom 
and equality was a new and popular one, and 
the farmers’ daughters round, if willing to 
“ work out,” preferred to go as “ help ” into 
poor families than as servants into wealthier 
ones. Peter and Polly thus remained unmo- 
lested under the shelter of Miss Hapgood’s 
farm-house. All was not cheerful prosperity 
even there. Some of the window-panes were 
broken, and glass to reset them was not to be 
procured. Peter, still struggling on with his 


196 


PETER AND POLLY. 


studies, found the necessary books were too 
“prodigious costly” things for him to even 
dream of possessing; and college life, now 
that he was so much nearer fit for it, seemed 
to be farther and farther away. Breadstuffs 
grew high and scarce, and salt to preserve the 
winter’s stock of meat was quite wanting ; the 
pigeons must be cured by smoking ; the beef 
and pork must be packed down in snow, after 
the Indian fashion, and an outcry was made 
every time there was a melting season. Even 
the small quantity of salt used on the table 
seemed a precious thing ; and Peter, whose task 
it had been to pound it, found his “ occupation 
gone.” Miss Keziah was busy half the time in 
devising and procuring substitutes for the vari- 
ous articles of constant use which the times had 
made costly or unattainable. She pounded 
fever-bush bark for spice, and prickly-ash for 
pepper, to add flavor to her dishes, while Judith 
carded the down from the silk-weed pods to 
make into candle-wicks, and saved every avail- 


PETER AND POLLY. 


19 7 


able “ tag ” of wool to put by toward making 
yarn or cloth, which, if not wanted for them- 
selves, would be sure to be needed by the 
soldiers, to whom it was customary to forward 
supplies whenever the opportunity offered. 

“ Hard times ” mean hard work. Peter and 
Polly began to realize that the price of free- 
dom was not to be paid alone by the sacrifice 
of noble lives, but by daily acts of petty self- 
denial and patient submission to discomforts 
as well. Beyond, the aspect of the war was 
gloomy indeed. The retreat from New York 
had been followed by “terrible times” in “the 
Jerseys,” and though the victories of Trenton 
and Princeton made the beginning of 1777 a 
“happy new year” for many a patriotic heart, 
the reduced state of the army, the prevailing 
sickness in it, and the increasing difficulty of 
obtaining recruits, made the prospect for the 
future exceedingly depressing. 

In the two letters which the children had 
received since their father’s return to the 


198 


PETER AND POLLY. 


army, though written in a spirit of cheerful 
trust, it was evident that he saw much to dis- 
courage him. Small-pox, dysentery, and ma- 
lignant fever had raged among the soldiers, 
who were suffering for food, care, and medi- 
cine, and many of his fellow-surgeons were 
wholly unfit for their places : some basely 
selling furloughs and discharges at less than 
a shilling a man ; others, well-meaning, but 
with no fit education for their position; while 
all alike were ill supplied with medicines and 
surgical instruments. The New Hampshire 
soldiers who in February returned to the little 
community brought back a sickening account 
of insubordination among the men in the 
army, and of lack of dignity and self-respect 
among its officers ; but nothing for a moment 
could dampen Miss Keziah’s ardor. “ It ’s 
freedom’s cause and the Lord’s cause,” she 
said, “ and it will be sure to prosper. It was 
n’t the lamps or the pitchers, it was the Lord’s 
will, that brought down the walls of Jericho.” 


PETER AND POLLY. 


I99 


After the yellow leaves fell and the birds 
took flight in the autumn, Polly’s life in the 
farm-house was dull enough. Peter found 
in Parson Piper an exceedingly appreciative 
teacher, who made him almost as much of a 
companion as a pupil, and with his books and 
lessons for friends, the studious boy was sel- 
dom lonely ; but Polly, when the winter snows 
had come and the roads were blocked, so that 
Job Hart and the great yellow oxen had hard 
labor to break them out, often grew impatient 
for companionship. She made work a substi- 
tute for play, and learned to spin on big and 
little wheels, and even to weave quite skil- 
fully for a beginner, with Judith for a teacher. 
Old Mrs. Potter, when in a garrulous mood, 
would entertain her with stories of her own 
young days when she lived in “a new set- 
tling” in the woods, where ten families used 
one frying-pan ; or of the stirring time when 
she took refuge in the garrison-house, and 
helped load the gun while her young lover, 


200 


PETER AND POLLY. 


Israel Potter, fired at the besieging savages ; 
and how her eldest son, in the French war, 
went forth with Rogers’s rangers, and returned, 
one of the few who came back, finding his 
way through the perilous, pathless woods, 
chewing the buds of trees and gnawing his 
knapsack-strap to keep himself from starving. 

Sometimes the neighbors — that is, the 
people living within five miles of them — 
came in for a visit, and sometimes Polly went 
out herself with Miss Keziah to a quilting or 
a tea-drinking, in return. One happy time 
Rob Millin brought over some shoes for 
Judith, and as his master was away he ven- 
tured to spend the evening ; and Tabby Bur- 
bean was there helping spin, and Parson 
Piper’s nephew had come to visit Peter ; so 
they had young folks enough for a merry- 
making ; and they parched corn, and roasted 
apples on the hearth, and told each other’s 
fortunes with burning nuts; and Job Hart 
came in with a borrowed fiddle, and Rob sang 


PETER AND POLLY. 


201 


“ Yankee Doodle,” and Tabby Burbean, “My 
Love is lost to Me ! ” and when she did so, 
Polly saw Judith go to the window and wipe 
her eyes ; and then they played games, blind- 
man’s-buff and twirl-the-trencher, and Polly, 
making up for her past quiet, frisked round to 
her heart’s content, as gay as a bird on the 
wing ; and even Rob forgot his trials for the 
time, only to have them come back to him 
looking blacker and bigger than ever when 
the clock struck nine, and he must return to 
his uncongenial home. 

The sweet-smelling spring came back at 
last. The sap began to stir in the maples. 
“More work for us,” thought Polly, grown 
practical, with a sigh in her heart, over the 
labor of sugar-making. Then the bluebirds 
sang, the willows filled the air with fragrance, 
the may-flowers blossomed in the wood; and 
after that the violets made purple all the 
brooksides ; and before they had quite with- 
ered, June had come, and the strawberries 


202 


PETER AND POLLY. 


were just beginning to grow ripe, when Polly, 
making haste to go out and gather the earliest, 
thought the world had never seemed so fair as 
it did that sweet summer morning ; for the 
robins sang their loudest, and the hemlock- 
boughs were fringed with softest green, and 
the river gleamed in the sunlight, like a golden 
stream, beyond the fields of budding flax. 
Polly fastened in her hair an opening bud of 
the wild rose, and was heaping her basket, 
scantily filled with berries, so few as yet were 
ripe, with the tender leaves of the new 
checkerberry, when she heard a rustling near 
her, and looked round, half startled. What 
strange, yet familiar person was this ? It 
was Rob, dressed in a complete suit of brown 
homespun, coarse, but not ill fitting, and show- 
ing to advantage his straight, slender figure, 
already beginning to have a strong and manly 
look. He carried a musket, and a knapsack 
was slung over his shoulder. 

“ Polly,” he said, in a low tone, for the first 


PETER AND POLLY. 


203 


time venturing to call her so, — “Polly, I ’m up 
and away ; and if I never come back you must 
sometimes give me a thought, for it is often 
enough that I shall think of you and Miss 
Keziah and your brother, wherever I may 
be” 

“ And where are you going to be ? ” asked 
Polly, who was apt to be prompt with her 
questions. 

“ My musket and knapsack tell you, do they 
not ? ” asked Rob ; “ and here,” he added, 
touching it, slung by his side, “is my powder- 
horn ; the same one I was making, last year, 
on Independence day, when I met you on the 
road as you were coming home.” 

The tears sprang into Polly’s eyes. “ Yes, 
they tell me,” she answered, solemnly ; “ and 
whether to be very glad, or very sorry, I can- 
not say.” 

“ Be very glad,” said the boy. “I am a 
man, for the first time, to-day ; and a free 
man. I have been a slave ever since I was 


204 


PETER AND POLLY. 


a little child, and if I never come back it ’s 
all one ; I have nothing to come to.” 

“O, yes, you have !” returned Polly; “we 
all, Peter, and Miss Keziah, and Judith, too, 
in her still way, and I, — O, I should be so 
sorry if any evil befell you ! And we shall be 
so happy to give you a welcome when we see 
you again ! ” 

“ If you ever do,” answered the boy, with a 
sigh. “You wonder where I earned these,” 
he continued, touching his musket, and then 
laying his hand on the cuff of his coat, as if 
conscious of pleasure in being, for once, suit- 
ably attired ; “ but, ever since I first heard of 
the fighting at Lexington, it has been in my 
thoughts day and night. ‘ There/ I would say 
to myself, every time I heard of the soldiers 
going out, ‘ is a chance for me/ All the time 
it has kept growing worse in the shop, till I 
can’t bear it any longer. Perhaps I am fool- 
ish, but, as I might be suspected, I thought 
I would rather go equipped with all the mili- 


PETER AND POLLY. 


205 


tia law required. So every farthing I could 
earn I saved. I laid snares for the crows 
and got bounties on their heads ; and when I 
went over to the tanner’s, as I often had to, I 
always carried a long pole, with an iron fork 
in one end of it, and took my way over the 
Ledge, and looked for rattlesnakes as I went, 
and if I killed one I had a bounty for that ; 
and last winter I made powder-horns, and sat 
up at night in the cold to do it ; and I ’ve 
had odd jobs of cobbling, — nothing but what 
I had a right to,” he said, fearing he might 
be thought to have used his master’s time 
dishonorably, “but things that came in my 
own way, that did not concern the shop ; 
and at last I earned my clothes and my mus- 
ket ; — they will give me a new one, I hope, 
when I get where I am going, but I bought 
this cheap ; it is one that was used in the 
French war fifteen years ago ; — and my knap- 
sack Jotham Brown gave me; he is a man 
you never saw, a teamster that used to live 


20 6 


PETER AND POLLY. 


here, and was kind to my father, and has been 
to me. If any one ought to fight for liberty, it 
is I. I know what it is to long for it, enough.” 

“ I hope,” said Polly, piously, “ that God will 
keep you ; and I am sure he will,” she added, 
“ for we shall never forget to ask him.” 

“But I am not quite free yet,” said Rob, 
“ and I shall not feel so till there are a good 
many miles between this place and me. I 
must be gone now, for soon they will be out 
searching for me, as they were for Brown Beck 
and your uncle’s teaspoons ; and if Master 
Dow offers a large reward, there will be 
those ready enough to take me back. But 
they never shall, — they never shall ! ” he re- 
peated. “ Good by, and give my love to all 
at the house, and this to your brother,” he 
said, and took from his breeches-pocket a 
little hard package, like a book ; “ it ’s all I 
have in the world that is of value to any one, 
and I thought, perhaps, as he is a scholar, it 
would be of use to him.” 


PETER AND POLLY. 


20 7 


As she took it, the great tears ran down 
Polly’s cheeks, for she could not bear to 
think of her first childish friend going out 
alone into the world, soon, perhaps, to meet 
death, and that in all probability they would 
never meet again. Rob brushed his hand 
across his eyes. “ Polly,” he said, “ be care- 
ful of one thing ; keep the book hid, and tell 
no one you have seen me till at least two 
weeks have gone by, not even Miss Keziah 
or your brother. They are both true friends, 
but if they really do not know anything about 
me, it will be easier for them to answer ques- 
tions if they are asked them. Good by,” he 
said, with a quiver of the lip. 

“Good by !” sobbed Polly, wishing she had 
some little memento that Rob could carry 
away. She took her kerchief to wipe her eyes ; 
it was a common one, coarse and ill woven, 
r or it was one of Polly’s first achievements at 
the wheel and the loom, but she had nothing 
else to give. “ It ’s all I have with me,” she 


208 


PETER AND POLLY. 


said, “ and it ’s very clumsily wove, but per- 
haps it will make you think of us, and when 
you see it you must always feel that you have 
some friends who think of you wherever you 
are.” 

“ Thank you a thousand times,” answered 
the boy, “ for the kind gift and the kinder 
thought ! But I must be going,” he said, look- 
ing all around, like one who feels himself in 
danger ; “ I cannot stay ! Good by, again ! ” 
He took her hand, just touched it to his lips, 
and was off, bounding like a deer up a steep 
path along a rocky ledge, and finally vanishing 
in a thicket of young sumachs. 

Polly went home with her little basket half 
filled with berries, and the wilted wild rose 
in her hair, sad and anxious, but a little proud 
withal, for she had come at last, she thought, 
to a romantic chapter in what seemed, to her 
adventurous spirit, like a mournfully prosaic 
life. 

Not a word did she utter when Peter, who, 


PETER AND POLLY . 


209 


in his way, had learned to entertain a pleas- 
ant, friendly feeling for Rob, whose ardent, 
restless temperament was so different from his 
own more quiet and studious one, came in 
quite alarmed with the statement that Jacob 
Dow, the shoemaker, had offered a large 
reward for the capture of his runaway appren- 
tice, and that he, and one or two rough men 
like himself, and the sheriff, were out in hot 
pursuit of poor Rob. 

“ He ’s run away and ’listed,” said Miss 
Keziah. 

“ How did you know he had ? ” asked Polly, 
almost sharply, and nearly betraying her 
knowledge. 

“ Know ? ” returned Miss Keziah ; “ it ’s 
what any sensible fellow ought to do in his 
place, and so I guess he has ; I ’ve wondered 
why he did n’t, this long while.” 

“ But I am so afraid he will be caught ! ” 
sighed Polly ; and felt, as she did so, of the book 
which she had put for the time in the patch- 


210 


PETER AND POLLY. 


work pocket under her short-gown and apron. 
It was a Hebrew Psalter, with “John Millin’’ 
on the title-page ; the only thing that had 
remained to the orphan child of a father who, 
in his youth, had known wealth and luxury 
and all bright anticipations of future pleasure 
and honor. 




CHAPTER X. 

B URGOYNE’S defeat! How it made 
the pulses beat and served to keep up 
the waning courage of the Colonies! But for 
that, what would have become of hope ? 

Polly’s father wrote a glowing letter, which 
was a long, long while in reaching them, giv- 
ing a heart-cheering account of it ; and Par- 
son Piper preached and prayed and returned 
thanks, interweaving the good news with all 
the exercises of public worship for four Sun- 
days in succession, to the exclusion of almost 
every other topic ; though, after all, his enthu- 
siasm was hardly as great as it had been when 
Stark carried all before him at Bennington, 
for Stark was a New Hampshire man, and 


212 


PETER AND POLLY. 


sectional pride was a stronger feeling then 
than it is to-day, when we are all bound to- 
gether “with sinews of brass and iron.” 

But when the huzzas of victory had died 
away, and snow had come again, what a de- 
pressing, gloomy, fearful winter it was ! Not 
alone to the barefooted soldiers sitting all 
night, hungry and homesick, by their camp- 
fires, because they had no blankets in which 
to sleep, but to every little village through- 
out the land, how much of privation and 
hardship it brought! Poor Parson Piper’s 
salary, paid in paper currency, was insufficient 
to buy decent clothing for his family (Mrs. 
Piper being one of the few women who were 
not accustomed to doing their own spinning 
and weaving) ; and the little Pipers found 
themselves brought to hard commons and short 
fare, — an unexpected lot, for, as minister’s 
children, they had been accustomed to carry 
themselves not without arrogance among their 
little mates when the eye of the good preacher 
was not upon them. 


PETER AND POLLY. 


213 


Polly, when she went to spend a brief time 
with her Aunt Nancy, found that things in 
the fine house were greatly changed. Her 
uncle, during the two past seasons, seemed to 
have grown almost ten years older. So many 
of his debtors had come to make payment, 
that the amount of paper-money he had on 
hand was to him a matter of most serious 
concern ; and as it every day was losing in 
value, his face grew longer and his brow more 
furrowed all the while. Aunt Nancy enter- 
tained Polly with distressing statistics of the 
price of various articles of food and wear ; 
telling her of an extravagant bride who was 
to be married in a dress the satin of which 
was seventy dollars a yard ; and of a soldier 
whose three ’tnonths’ wages had barely pur- 
chased a warming-pan ; and how the price of 
ten acres of land which they had sold had 
brought to them but little more than half a 
peck of salt. Truly, Mr. Burbean’s prophecy 
had come to pass ; “ breadstuff's were scarce 


214 


PETER AND POLLY. 


and taxes high ; the Indians on the borders 
were all hawking round, and the paper-money 
was worth little more than a crop of fire- 
weed”; which, by the way, was a trouble- 
some, exhaustive plant, springing up on newly 
burnt lands. 

Dr. Austin, when he had seen her at the 
time of his furlough, had left with Miss Keziah 
a sufficient sum of money to meet all the ex- 
penses of his children for a long season in 
advance, but he had hoped, ere this, to be able 
to forward an additional remittance. It was, 
however, almost impossible to send to her 
securely, at so great a distance; and besides, 
all he could now procure was in paper cur- 
rency, which seemed of too little value to be 
worth transmitting. So Peter and Polly be- 
gan to have a sadly dependent feeling, and 40 
relieve it as best they could, bravely set to 
work to make themselves paying members of 
the family in which they were placed. Parson 
Piper, out of pure love of bestowing instruc- 


PETER AND POLLY. 


215 


tion, had insisted that Peter should continue 
to come to him each week, and with the hope 
that the lad would prove, in the end, a preacher 
like himself, had constrained him to pursue 
his study of Hebrew, in which Rob’s Psalter 
was found to be a valuable assistance ; but if 
at any time the pupil was unusually dull, it 
would commonly turn out that Peter had been 
in the woods helping Job Hart get in the 
stock of “ fewel ” (a matter of interest to the 
minister, the best part of his salary being then 
made up of his annual supply of thirty cords 
of fire-wood), or that he had been driving Miss 
Keziah’s oxen in breaking out the road, or 
preparing stakes (all cut by hand) for a new 
fence, or, in warm weather, that he had been 
busy swingling flax in the barn. 

They all in that vicinity wore old shoes that 
winter, for the shoemaker, with no Rob to 
help him, was habitually delinquent in meet- 
ing his engagements. Polly often recalled her 
old friend’s romantic farewell on the hillside, 


21 6 


PETER AND POLLY. 


and wonderingly queried, with Peter and Miss 
Keziah, what had become of him ; but no word 
in regard to his fortunes had ever reached 
them. 

“ No news is good news,” said Miss Keziah, 
“ but I only wish I ’d known the boy was 
going ; I would have knit him a store of stock- 
ings and made him a pair of shirts.” 

“ It is well to bear the yoke in one’s youth.” 
Peter hard at work, and then busy at his 
books, Polly learning to cook and sew and 
spin and weave, were each acquiring, every 
day, lessons of patience, industry, and thought- 
fulness toward others. 

Even for Mrs. Job Hart, indifferent whether 
the “ Gineral Congress ” or “ King George ” 
was in power, and whose baby still wore a 
grimy cap, Polly began to feel a forbearing 
tenderness. What must it have been to spend 
one’s childhood with a family of nine in a log- 
hut with but one small window and a smoky 
chimney, with a drunken Indian family on 


PETER AND POLLY. 


217 


one side, and a wolf-haunted wood on the other, 
with a rough father who had fallen into roam- 
ing ways in the French war, and who left, in 
savage fashion, the chief care of the planting 
and harvesting to his unfortunate “women 
folks ” ; with no furniture but a few stools, no 
dishes or cooking-utensils, save some poorly 
made wooden plates, a kettle, and a hand-basin, 
with which the water for all the family use 
must be brought from the river ; with no bed 
but one of hemlock-boughs or straw, — what 
must such a life have been ? Polly, in the new 
light of her experience of hard work, was all 
alive with sympathy, and instead of scorning 
Mrs. Hart for her ignorance and her untidy 
ways, looked at her with wonder that she had 
preserved a clean heart through all ; and when, 
one bleak March morning, she found that 
the last baby had been supplanted by a new 
one, she took Miss Keziah’s old white horse, 
and urged her through the mud and melting 
snow of the worst of roads to Mr. Burbean’s, to 


218 


PETER AND POLLY. 


borrow a blanket, that the little stranger might 
be properly presented for baptism the next 
Sunday ; “ delays are dangerous ” being, one 
would think, the motto of old-time New Eng- 
land church-members as regarded christen- 
ings. It was a pretty square of white linen, 
quilted with many flowers, that had done good 
service for the fourteen Burbean infants, to 
say nothing of much lending, and was good 
still for long years of future use. 

Polly was quite indignant that Miss Keziah, 
who had the chief rule of everything on her 
place, did not think best that the little stran- 
ger should be carried nearly four miles on 
its first earthly Sabbath to be baptized ; and 
was, in turn, delighted when, three weeks 
after, on a sunny April Sunday, the baby 
could be wrapped in its borrowed mantle and 
wear the new embroidered cap which she had 
made, and go, carried in Miss Keziah’s arms, 
in the cart, to the house of the Lord, where 
he received a name of Polly’s own selection, 


PETER AND POLLY. 


219 


“Peter Lafayette,” — a double name, which was 
a rare thing in those days ; but no single one 
could have satisfied Polly, who, half jealously, 
thought that Parson Piper, in his patriotic 
prayer, offered more fervent petitions for the 
French general than for his insignificant 
namesake. 

But it was less, after all, of births than of 
death that the gentle spring was speaking to 
them. A change had come over the quiet 
home that the brother and sister had learned 
to call theirs. The old grandmother, who had 
seemed so very aged and frail that they had 
thought she might die at any time, still kept 
her place at the table and the hearth, and told 
over the tales of the borrowed frying-pan, and 
the besieged garrison, and the half-starved 
soldier, as often as ever; but Judith, the pale, 
still woman, whose hand had always been 
busy from morning till night, was now too 
feeble for toil, and patiently and serenely she 
was “ wearing away, like a snow-wreath in a 
thaw.” 


220 


PETER AND POLLY. 


In vain the village doctor, his great saddle- 
bags stuffed, came to her with his prescrip- 
tions ; in vain Miss Keziah steeped for her 
golden-rod, balm, life-everlasting, and queen- 
of-the-meadow : every passing week found her 
more wasted and languid. Her chief delight 
was in the hymns of the new book, “ Watts’s 
Collection,” which now took the place of “ Tate 
and Brady ” in the Sunday meetings. Polly 
had learned many of these by heart, and used 
to say them over to her, as they sat together 
in the sweet summer twilight till it deepened 
into dusk. There was one that she seemed 
to prefer to all the others : — 

“ A blooming paradise of joy 
In this wild desert springs : 

And every sense I straight employ 
On sweet celestial things. 

“ White lilies all around appear, 

And each his glory shows ! 

The rose of Sharon blossoms here, 

The fairest flower which blows.” 


PETER AND POLLY. 


221 


Perhaps it was the thought of the celes- 
tial blossoms that lent the hymn its charm, 
for the flower-bed under the window had been 
to poor Judith, for the last few years, her 
greatest pleasure ; and now that she knew her 
time was brief, and other earthly things had 
lost for her their interest, she still watched the 
unfolding of the buds with all her old delight, 
and even expressed the wish that she might 
live to see in bloom a rare and beautiful rose- 
bush, called the cinnamon-rose, the root of 
which a friend of Keziah’s had sent all the 
way from “ old Haverhill ” two years before. 
It had grown well, but never flowered until 
this spring, when it was covered with buds. 
A few warm days, the first of June, seemed 
to develop them all at once, and the bush, 
among the green grass where it grew, gleamed 
like a fragrant cloud dropped from the morn- 
ing sky. They drew Judith in the cushioned 
arm-chair up to the window, that she might 
see it. 


222 


PETER AND POLLY. 


“ ‘ White lilies all around appear, 

And each his glory shows ! 

The rose of Sharon blossoms here, 

The fairest flower which blows. 

“ ‘ Up to the fields, above the skies, 

My hasty feet would go, — 

There everlasting flowers arise, 

And joys unwith’ring grow,’ ” 

she whispered, smiling, and then, being weary, 
closed her eyes, and dropped at last to sleep. 
When she wakened her mind wandered, and, 
as it proved, these were the last reasonable 
words she spoke. 

How worn and wasted she looked, when 
the gentle soul had flown, and the clay was 
only clay ! Pinned inside her short-gown was 
a fragment of paper enclosing a lock of hair, 
and some time-faded verses, well written, — 
those who could write commonly wrote well in 
those days, — but not perfect in spelling or 
measure, and signed “ Ebenezer.” Of what 
sweet sad secret of her girlhood they were the 


PETER AND POLLY. 


223 


last reminder no one knew, not even Miss 
Keziah ; but Polly regarded them reverently, 
and felt that she knew the reason of the 
expression of patient submission which had 
always rested on Judith’s placid face. 

“ There is one thing,” said Miss Keziah, as 
she laid on the closed eyes two silver coins 
still remaining in the house, “ I will not dis- 
honor Judith by making her funeral a display 
of extravagance, as some such occasions in 
this region have been.” 

“ No, I would n’t,” said Mrs. Piper, the par- 
son’s wife, who, hearing of the mournful event, 
had ridden over ; “ but then, I like suitable 
respect paid to the departed. Now, in some 
places, since the war, it seems as if they were 
giving up everything. The women are wear- 
ing no mourning, except black ribbon on their 
bonnets, and the men only a piece of crape 
on the arm ; and they don’t even give gloves 
to the bearers ; that seems dreadful to me.” 

“ Well,” said Miss Keziah, “ there are things 


224 


PETER AND POLLY. 


that I think are worse. Now, when Jabez 
Plummer, Mrs. Burbean’s sister’s husband, 
died, it really seemed sinful the way his widow 
went on. Jabez had been doing well and had 
laid up money, but, when he died, one would 
have thought a woman with nothing of her 
own, and five children under eight, two of them 
twin babies, would have felt she did not want 
to go to needless expense ; and yet, all she 
appeared to care about was a handsome burial. 
She got a black scarf, gown, and bonnet for 
herself, and dressed the children in mourning, 
and bought black buttons and buckles for her 
husband’s brother who lived with her, and 
funeral rings to give to all the relations, and 
as many as twenty pairs of gloves, — some 
costly ones, to lay on the coffin for the bearers 
to put on when they took up the bier ; and 
she got some Jamaica rum, and Madeira wine, 
and other spirits, for the supper, when the 
procession should come home ; and the young 
brother took so much it turned his head, and 


PETER AND POLLY. 


22 5 


he began to sing “Push about the Jorum” 
at the table ; and Mrs. Plummer found herself 
in debt, and has been in trouble ever since. 
I am no one’s judge, but such conduct would 
be very wrong in me.” 

“ Well, I don’t like display,” said Mrs. Piper, 
who had a still unsubdued fondness for finery, 
“ but I do like gloves at a funeral.” 

“ But gloves are just what, in a time like 
this, cannot be thought of!” said Keziah, with 
an anxious remembrance of the dependent old 
mother and her wants, and of the half-filled 
salt-cellar on the closet shelf, and of the price 
of shoes and of grain, and a patriotic thought, 
not the less, of the brave men in arms, who, 
through the dreary winter, had been garment- 
less and hungry, and of their suffering fami- 
lies, whom the soldiers’ wages, tardily paid and 
almost worthless when received, could not sup- 
port and could scarcely assist. “Judith will 
never be forgotten ; but, when God in his 
providence has taken her where * want ’ is a 


226 


PETER AND POLLY. 


word unknown, and ther^are those living 
about us who are sorely in need of food and 
clothing, I shall go into no expense for her fu- 
neral beyond what seems to me necessary to 
make it suitable and respectful, under the cir- 
cumstances . ” Miss Keziah felt that, in saying 
this, she had taken an independent stand. The 
stuff that reformers are made of was mingled 
in her character. 

The sun shone brightly on the day of the 
burial ; the birds sang their sweetest, and the 
soft south-wind came through the window into 
the front room where the mourners were sit- 
ting, and where a coffin of pine boards painted 
black rested on the table spread with white, in 
the middle of the room. How lifelike and 
sweet the face within it looked, made lovely 
with that almost glorified smile that not -in- 
frequently comes to the lips of one who has 
fallen into the last dreamless sleep ! 

There were no gloves on the coffin. The 
old mother sat propped up in her great arm- 


PETER AND POLLY. 


227 


chair, wearing a still well-preserved black bon- 
net, that she had had for twenty years ; but 
Miss Keziah, though she had long been to 
Judith as a sister, wore not even the semblance 
of mourning. “ Borrowing black ” was a mock- 
ery that she despised, and so costly was every 
article of imported ware, she had not even ven- 
tured to allow herself a new ribbon ; an omis- 
sion which was a trial to Polly, who, even on 
solemn occasions, had a reverence for the fash- 
ion of the time, and still, against her will, her 
sympathies were with Miss Keziah. Every 
needless expenditure, in those dark days, 
seemed like a wicked waste. 

Unconsciously she herself had made an in- 
novation upon the customs of the day. Where 
the winding-sheet crossed Judith’s breast, Miss 
Keziah had slipped beneath it the time-yel- 
lowed verses and the lock of hair ; and Polly 
laid, just over them, a knot of the sweet-smell- 
ing pinks that Judith had loved to gather from 
the little flower-bed, and on the coffin-lid, 


228 


PETER AND POLLY. 


instead of the great bunch of tansy commonly 
placed there, was a lovely branch of the new 
rose-tree, its blossoms grown of a paler pink, 
but not a petal shed. 

Parson Piper preached from the quaint text, 
“ She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her 
hands hold the distaff” ; which seemed to him 
appropriate, since Judith was well known, not 
only in her own household, but in all the com- 
munity, as a famous spinner and weaver, and, 
before her health had failed, was often in re- 
quest, among the families who knew her, to 
come with her little wheel and assist them. 

Such dainty linen as she wove ! so firm, 
and fine, and white ! The winding-sheet that 
wrapped her round she had made herself. She 
had watched the flax when its blue blossoms 
gleamed in the sun ; she had wound its deli- 
cate fibre on the distaff, and spun and woven 
every thread herself ; she had spread the web 
to bleach in the glad spring sunshine, in the 
fields where the dewy grass glistened as with 


PETER AND POLLY. 


229 


gems, and where golden lines showed the wan- 
derings of the cowslip-bordered brook ; and, 
when the sheet was finished, she had laid it 
away in the great store-chest, with lavender 
between its folds. Now, like a tired child, in- 
folded in it, she had lain down to sleep. 

Of the industry, patience, and the purity of 
her life, the good preacher spoke with tender 
appreciation, and dwelt with sorrow on her de- 
parture ; but, true to himself, it was not long 
before all thought of private grief was lost in 
that of the public peril. The poor parson was 
beginning to be less hopeful of speedy success; 
the war was so slow in coming to an end ! 
But, however cast down, his faith in the ul- 
timate triumph of liberty was never for a 
moment shaken. Instead of the funeral psalm 
which he had intended to line out for the 
singers, beginning, 

“ Remember, Lord, our mortal state, 

How frail our life, how short the date ! ” 

absorbed by his interest in his country, and 


230 


PETER AND POLLY. 


too absent-minded to remember his surround- 
ings, he had commenced a hymn headed in 
the book as a “Complaint against Persecut- 

a . 

ors : — 

“ And will the God of grace 
Perpet’al silence keep ? 

The God of justice hold his peace, 

And let his veng’ance sleep ? 

“ Behold, what cursed snares 

The men of mischief spread ! ” 

Just then, it came back to him where he was, 
and he grew very red ; but thinking the best 
way out of his difficulties was to go forward, 
he proceeded to line out two more of the 
six stanzas following, which were sung with 
spirit by the singers, although there was 
some interchange of glances among them, 
and Tabby Burbean, who had just been weep- 
ing aloud, smiled visibly at the blunder. 

“ The noble and the base 
Into thy pastures leap : 

The lion and the stupid ass 
Conspire to vex thy sheep. 


PETER AND POLLY. 


231 


“ Convince their madness, Lord, 

And make them seek thy name ; 

Or else their stubborn rage confound, 

That they may die with shame,” 

were verses, certainly, that did not breathe 
the spirit of pious resignation and submission 
which one would look for in a funeral hymn. 

“It was very dreadful!” Polly thought; and 
poor Mrs. Piper, who was always in dread of 
her husband’s absent-minded mistakes, looked 
exceedingly disturbed. 

When the exercises were closed, the mourn- 
ers went forward “ to take leave of the corpse.” 
The poor mother, bowed with age and broken 
in mind, bent half-wonderingly over the coffin, 
as though she thought her daughter might in 
truth be “not dead but sleeping,” while Polly’s 
tears fell fast on the gentle face that she had 
never seen clouded by a frown. There were 
twelve bearers, six of whom were to carry the 
bier, and the others to exchange places with 
them on the way to the burial-ground, for it was 


232 


PETER AND POLLY. 


over three miles they had to go ; but the num- 
ber was more than was needed, the burden 
was so light. Polly, worn as she was with 
previous care of the sick, felt almost faint as 
she wended her way with the slow-moving pro- 
cession, along the dusty road. It seemed as 
if her weary feet would never suffice to carry 
her all the way and home again, and when she 
had passed the gate to return, she leaned on 
Peter, who walked with her, glad of the sup- 
port of his arm. It was the same graveyard 
that she had once looked upon with terror, and 
that, moved by Brown Beck’s stories, she had 
peopled with ghosts and hobgoblins ; but now, 
with Judith slumbering under its green turf, 
it seemed a sacred and a cherished place. 

All the bearers, Parson Piper and his wife, 
and several friends and acquaintances, for 
relatives there were none, returned to Miss 
Ilapgood’s to partake of the funeral supper, a 
substantial meal of bread and meat, pies and 
cakes ; but, considering the costliness of spirits 


PETER AND POLLY. 


233 


and wines, Miss Keziah had resolutely deter- 
mined to dispense with them. Mr. Burbean, 
one of the bearers, reminded, perhaps by their 
absence, of the gloomy outlook, set down his 
mug of cider with a long-drawn sigh. “These 
are hard times, I declare ! ” he said ; “ I don’t 
see how things can be much darker than they 
are to-day ! ” He looked, Polly noticed, worn 
and poverty-pinched, and his hair was show- 
ing the snow of age, as well as that of powder. 
“ Liberty, so far, seems to mean prodigious 
hard work and monstrous poor pay ! ” 

“Poor pay!” broke out Parson Piper, whom 
the remark had not been intended to reach, 
— “ poor pay ! It ’s worth all the blood that 
has been spilt, to feel that we are a recognized 
nation with a flag of our own ; a flag that 
hain’t waved a year yet, but that I hope will 
be flying when our children’s children are laid 
in dust ! We ain’t working for ourselves. A 
man like you, Mr. Burbean, with thirteen chil- 
cren, has got the future to think about.” 


234 


PETER AND POLLY. 


“That is so,” said Mr. Burbean, with a 
fatherly smile lighting up his countenance, 
“and I ain’t inclined generally to be down- 
hearted, nor to take a gloomy view o’ things ; 
but somehow of late it does look dark to me, 
very dark.” 

“ Polly,” said Peter, when the supper was 
over, and Tabby Burbean and Mrs. Hart were 
wiping up the dishes, — “ Polly, come out with 
me, and let us go down by the spring.” 

“Yes,” said Polly, though she was so wearied 
by her walk to the graveyard that she would 
have answered “ No,” only it was so rare a 
thing for Peter to ask her to go out with him. 
“ Was something going to happen ? ” she 
thought ; for a misgiving was in her heart, as 
she closed the door behind her, and looked up 
anxiously in her brother’s face. “ What is it, 
Peter ? ” she asked. 

But Peter said nothing ; only he led the 
way across the road, where a spring bubbled 
up among the rocks, under the shade of a 


PETER AND POLLY. 


235 


great willow. “ Polly,” he said, sitting down 
on a rough seat made from a tree-trunk, which 
he had fitted there himself, so as to have a 
quiet place for study, and drawing her gently 
down beside him, — “Polly, don’t you think, 
with Mr. Burbean, that these are hard times ? ” 
“Yes, Peter, I do,” answered Polly, half 
smiling, half crying ; “things look dark.” 

“In the first place,” said Peter, “ I ’m getting 
to be a man ; I ’m sixteen, and tall.” 

“Yes,” returned Polly, “and I am grown 
older too. I don’t feel as if I could be the 
same little girl that was at Aunt Nancy’s and 
was afraid of witches.” 

“ And a man needs something to live on,” 
said Peter ; “ here we are, — the paper-money, 
if father could send it to us, is, as people say, 
grown good for nothing. It is n’t without a 
cause for it that Uncle Philbrick’s hair has 
turned so white. I am of some use here on 
the farm ; but Cousin, Keziah, although she 
would not say so for anything, does not really 


236 


PETER AND POLLY. 


need me, and as for going to college, it is 
an impossibility. I might earn something by 
teaching school, but half the grammar schools 
are given up, and if they were not — I don’t 
know — He stopped and leaned his head 
upon his hand. 

“ Don’t worry,” said Polly ; “ things will 
come out some way ; they always do.” 

“Some way? Yes,” repeated Peter, “but 
what way ? Don’t you think, Polly, it ’s a 
long time since we have heard from father ? ” 
he asked. 

“ Do I think of anything else ? ” returned 
Polly. “ What is it that is in my mind wher- 
ever I go but — He is n’t dead, Peter ? you 
must n’t speak of that ! ” 

“ No,” said Peter, “ it is not strange that we 
have not heard, everything is so uncertain, 
now ; but there is no use in thinking we can 
get word to him, and ask for advice. I don’t 
know where he is, and it takes such a mon- 
strous while for a letter to come to us, even if 


PETER AND POLLY. 


237 


he does write ! I have got to act for myself. 
Parson Piper is the nearest a father to me of 
any one here, and General Sullivan is all the 
time calling for volunteers to go to Rhode 
Island, and — and — I ’m going, Polly.” 

“ Going ! ” screamed Polly, starting up, — 
“going? If you do, I shall be all alone in 
the world ! all, all alone ! Parson Piper don’t 
care for anything but the country ; if he 
thought it would further the cause of liberty 
half an inch, he would see you cut in pieces ; 
I believe he would ! He is cruel, and you are 
cruel, and I wish this dreadful war had never 
been begun ! ” And Polly, all her patriotism 
vanishing in an instant, threw her arms 
around her brother’s neck and sobbed aloud, 
as if her heart would break. 

“ But I sha’ n’t be placed as some soldiers 
are,” explained Peter, smoothing down her hair 
with gentle, caressing touch ; “ Parson Piper 
knows General Sullivan, and he is going to 
write to him ; and besides, he is acquainted 


238 


PETER AND POLLY. 


with the colonel, who has been hereabouts 
getting recruits, and he promises, if I go, to 
take me into his own tent, and I shall 'be cared 
for in every way that one can be.” 

“ Cared for ! ” said Polly, bitterly ; “ yes, 
cared for as the soldiers were at Valley Forge! 
And as for me, I shall be all alone in the world ! 
all, all alone ! ” 




CHAPTER XI. 

I N the retrospect of the three weary years 
that followed, Polly’s thoughts always cen- 
tred upon one day. 

It was a mild spring morning, the 19th of 
May. She was at home with her Cousin Ke- 
ziah, and they were busily packing up and 
getting things in order; for now that Judith’s 
mother, for whom she had cared so long, was 
laid to rest, Miss Hapgood was thinking of 
indulging herself in a visit to Massachusetts, 
and in seeing “ old Haverhill ” once more. 
She would not sell her New Hampshire place, 
however ; times were too uncertain for her to 
think of disposing of it. Polly, during her ab- 
sence, would stay with her Aunt Nancy, who 


240 


PETER AND POLLY. 


in the past year had grown very fond of hav- 
ing her niece with her; for Polly, the last 
few months, had been boarding with her aunt 
and teaching the village reading-and- writing 
school, instructing the children chiefly from 
the primer and psalter, and giving the girls 
lessons in sewing, knitting, tambour-work, and 
embroidery. 

It was not a very lively place, for Mrs. Phil- 
brick, though better satisfied with her niece 
than of old, was no more patient with the rest 
of the world, and was always indulging in dreary 
forebodings as to the future or equally cheer- 
less reminiscences of the past ; now telling over 
the story of Brown Beck’s ingratitude, now 
dwelling on the “upstart injustice” of their 
poorer neighbors, and, again, complaining of 
the hard work of her daily lot, and prophesy- 
ing even greater trials yet to come. Her hus- 
band, who still, in spite of his losses, was 
esteemed the richest man in the township, was 
so tormented by the comparison of past pros- 


PETER AND POLLY. 


24I 


perity and present insecurity, as to feel as if 
he were in abject poverty ; and although, from 
pride, they still maintained something of style 
in their manner of life, there was constantly 
an atmosphere of gloom about the house that 
was truly oppressive. 

It was therefore with sorrow that Polly 
thought of Miss Keziah’s departure, as she 
stood, this May morning, looking out of her 
bedroom window. The wind came in from 
the west laden with the odor of lilac-flowers, 
from a tree whose root, like that of Judith’s 
cinnamon-rose, had been brought from “old 
Haverhill,” and which now tossed its great 
purple plumes over the front porch. It was 
dripping with moisture, for there had been a 
slight shower, and all the morning a threat- 
ening thunder-cloud had hung over the west, 
settling round toward the north, and the wind 
was blowing up clouds from the southwest. 

“ It is going to be a bad day to sew,” said 
Polly ; “ and after we had finished our other 


242 


PETER AND POLLY, \ 


work, I had hoped to get about my Grecian 
robe, and begin to embroider it.” Her Gre- 
cian robe was a gown of white linen, wrought 
with a straggling vine in blue cotton thread, a 
common fashion of the time. 

“ See those clouds coming up,” said Miss 
Keziah, looking over Polly’s shoulder as she 
gazed out of the window ; “ they have a 
strange brassy look, not like rain-clouds, and 
not smoke.” 

“ Yes,” said Polly ; “ see that great one hov- 
ering over Squaw’s Peak, where, week before 
last, the fire was raging.” 

“ Yes,” said Miss Keziah, “ Justice Cram had 
Pompey set fire to a lot of birch-trees to clear 
the land, but it ’s a poor way to do it ; I was 
glad when the rain came and put it out. But 
how dark it is ! ” she exclaimed, as she turned 
back to the room ; “ I can scarcely see ; my 
eyes are failing, I declare ! ” 

‘‘Your eyes failing! No; but it’s fearful 
dark,” said Polly ; “ almost like the day Ju- 


PETER AND POLLY. 


243 


dith’s mother used to tell about in 1716, when 
they had to light candles to eat dinner by.” 

“ And I shall have to light a candle, too,” 
said Miss Keziah, who held in her hand an 
unfinished piece of sewing-work. “ If I go on 
my journey, this gown must be finished, and 
I can’t possibly see without one.” She went 
down stairs, and Polly still stood by the win- 
dow looking out. How unreal the landscape 
appeared ! The strange darkness was deepen- 
ing all the while ; a gloomy shadow that wore 
the look of coming night was creeping up 
the meadow. In the growing dusk she could 
scarcely see the alder-trees beyond the brook ; 
they were mere indistinct shapes. Darker and 
darker it grew, till now she could barely dis- 
tinguish them at all. She looked up and saw 
that weird copper-colored cloud had closed 
over all the sky. 

“ Polly ! ” called Miss Keziah, from below 
stairs, speaking to her, — “Polly! this is some- 
thing dreadful ! ” 


244 


PETER AND POLLY. 


“ Yes, dreadful ! ” answered Polly, under a 
fascination that still kept her at the window. 

Darker and darker still it grew ! She heard 
a fluttering ; the purple doves were hurrying 
to their window in the top of the barn, and a 
flock of turkeys were flying up to the old oak, 
where they were accustomed to roost at night. 
She could not see the alders at all now, nor 
tell where the pine-trees stood ; but down in 
the marsh the frogs were peeping, and look ! 
old Crumple Horn had made her way out of 
the pasture, and, followed by the two cosset 
sheep, was wending , her way through the 
shadows to the barn-yard, where she was 
wonted to be milked. Darker and darker 
yet ! The night-birds began to call “ whip- 
poor-will ! whip-poor-will ! ” from the low roof 
of the long shed. She heard the melancholy 
sound, and, as she listened, a great gray owl, 
with glaring eyes, flew close to her, following 
its prey. 

“ Polly ! ” said Miss Keziah, coming to the 


PETER AND POLLY. 


245 


door with a candle in her hand, and with a 
solemn countenance, — “Polly! this is dread- 
ful ! I can’t help thinking of the text, ‘ The 
sun shall be turned into darkness, and the 
moon into blood, before the great and the ter- 
rible day of the Lord come.’ ” 

“Yes,” said Polly, “I have thought of it 
myself, and of the hour when ‘ the veil of the 
temple was rent.’ ” 

The two women sat down, hand in hand, on 
the side of Polly’s little bed. The clock struck 
the hour of noon, but the darkness only seemed 
deeper ; the customary midday meal was un- 
thought of ; the cock crowed as he did in the 
early morning, and the candle, untended, 
burnt low, with crusted wick and flickering 
flame. All that was sad and mysterious in 
human life, all that was trying in her own 
experience, came back to Polly. What wrong 
and wretchedness there was in the world ! 
what suffering, and sin, and bloodshed ! She 
seemed to behold, as in a vision, the dreary 


246 


PETER AND POLLY. 


events of which the last years had been so 
full. The blood-stained snows of Valley Forge, 
the pestilential heat of Monmouth, the red 
flame of Wyoming, — she recalled them all. 
Ships lashed together, with soldiers grappling 
in a death-struggle on their decks, battle-fields 
strewn with corpses, loathsome prisons, rifled 
houses, every fearful or shameful thing of 
which she had heard or read, seemed to rise 
before her. All her saddest thoughts were 
linked with those of war, for the national 
struggle had taken from her what was dearest 
in her life. * 

A black wall seemed to shut her in, beyond 
which she could neither see nor hear. If she 
could only know where her father and Peter 
were ! but it was now long months since she 
had heard from either of them. The last letter 
from her father had hinted of sickness, and, 
though he had breathed no word of complaint, 
she knew what he must suffer, in one of the 
army hospitals, which, from other sources, she 


PETER AND POLLY. 247 

had learned to be destitute of almost every 
comfort he would need ; while, as for Peter, 
she had not heard from him since General 
Sullivan’s resignation in November, and then 
his letter had been one of disappointment. 
When he left for the war he had hoped to be 
able, before this time, to write of brave deeds, 
if not of glorious victories; but General Sulli- 
van, under whose command he was enlisted, 
having engaged in his much-criticised expedi- 
tion against the Six Nations, the poor lad felt 
that he had endured many hardships and en- 
countered many dangers, for, at best, a very 
doubtful good in the result. 

This brief and hastily written letter was all 
they had received from Peter, and all that 
Polly knew of the twin-brother who had shared 
her cradle, and joined with her in her childish 
sports, and who had had so full a part in all 
her thoughts and feelings, that her own exist- 
ence had seemed a double one. Where, too, 
was Rob, her childish friend, with his ear- 


248 PETER AND POLLY. 

nest eyes and daring heart ? Never, since she 
bade him “good by,” that sweet June morn- 
ing, had word or sign returned to tell of his 
welfare. Would the veil ever be lifted, and 
she behold her lost friends on earth again, or 
was it, in truth, the shadow of death ? 

“ Polly,” said Miss Keziah, as if she divined 
her thoughts, “ let us not be afraid ; 4 the 
darkness and the light are both alike to 
Him.’ ” 

By and by, scarcely perceptibly at first, the 
sky began to lighten. “ Does it, or not ? ” 
asked Polly, in doubt ; but in the next half- 
hour the change was very evident, and by 
three o’clock the appearance was like that of 
an ordinary murky afternoon. 

But at night the strange darkness returned. 
It seemed to Polly, lying awake, as if it were 
an actual presence in the room, such perfect 
blackness rested all around ; “ a thick dark- 
ness, that might be felt,” like that which fell 
on ancient Egypt. The moon, that the night 


PETER AND POLLY. 


249 


before had shone into her window, seemed 
blotted out ; there was not even the faintest 
glimmer of light. Polly started up from her 
pillow and gazed about. Her bed was cur- 
tainless, but a frightful pall seemed close 
drawn all around her. “ A horror of great 
darkness ” came upon her. She grew cold, 
and shuddered with unknown terror ; and then 
she remembered Miss Keziah’s words of Scrip- 
ture comfort, “ The darkness and the light 
are both alike to Him.” They fell upon 
her troubled mind like balm. She said them 
over and over to herself, until at last she 
dropped asleep, and when she woke again a 
few hours after, the moon was looking down 
calmly and brightly, and the stars were gleam- 
ing in the clear sky. 




CHAPTER XII. 

W AS it Polly, or some one else ? Polly 
had to pinch herself to find out. 

She was no longer a little country-maid 
roaming through the meadows, or singing at 
her wheel, but a fine young lady with a stiff 
brocade and a stiffer hoop ; with a long neck- 
lace of gold beads hanging over the fine lace 
in the low bosom of her short-waisted gown. 
Her hair had been arranged, with indescriba- 
ble elaboration, upon the top of her head, and 
great golden hoops were ‘gleaming in her ears. 
Her shoes were of white satin, decorated with 
resplendent buckles, and covered with roses 
and lilies, wrought in red and yellow silk ; 
but when she looked at her feet Polly knew 


PETER AND POLLY. 


251 


she was only Polly, for money was not yet a 
plentiful thing with her, and the only pair of 
silk hose she had were, strange to say, the 
very ones she had worn, not quite seven years 
before, on her ride to New Hampshire, and, as 
her feet were small and slender, they were 
still large enough for her to wear. Her rich 
dress had been made from one that was her 
mother’s ; but the handsome fan, shining with 
golden spangles, and.painted with a picture of 
nymphs and goddesses, had been sent her by 
her father, as a present ; for brighter days had 
come, and the pretty trifle had been trans- 
mitted in anticipation of his return ; and Polly 
was now in Massachusetts, in het 4 father’s 
house with Mrs. Ellis, who had kept it all the 
while, waiting to give him a welcome home 
again. For victory had come ! Victory ! how 
much that word meant, after so many years of 
unrewarded struggling with the foe ! How 
brightly the fair flag, a new flag then, like a 
fresh-blown flower with the dew on it, waved 


252 


PETER AND POLLY. 


under the blue sky ! How the hills shook 
with echoed shouts, and every liberty-loving 
heart bounded with rapture ! Parson Piper, 
after Cornwallis’s surrender, had changed every 
Sunday into an unappointed Thanksgiving 
day, and the village choir had made the little 
meeting-house ring with the most exultant 
hymns in the new hymn-book, which was an 
edition for the times, full of radical republi- 
canism in lyric form ; as . 

“ When God, our leader, shines in arms, 

What mortal heart can bear 
The thunder of his loud alarms, 

The lightning of his spear ? 

“ He forms our gen’rals for the field, 

With all their dreadful skill, 

Gives them his awful sword to wield. 

And makes their hearts of steel. 

“ He arms our captains to the fight, 

Though there his name *s forgot ; 

(He girded Cyrus with his might. 

But Cyrus knew him not.)” 


PETER AND POLEY. 


253 


or, 

u Zion, rejoice, and Judah, sing, 

The Lord assumes his throne : 

New England, own the heav’nly King, 

And make his glories known. 

“ The great, the wicked, and the proud, 

From their high seats are hurled ; 

Jehovah rides upon a cloud, 

And thunders through the world.” 

or, 

“ Our States, O Lord, with songs of praise 
Shall in thy strength rejoice ; 

And blest with thy salvation raise 
To heaven their cheerful voice. 

“ Thy sure defence through nations round 
Has spread thy glor’ous name ; 

And our successful actions crowned 
Thy majesty with fame ” ; 

which last verse was Parson Piper’s favorite, as 
giving the fullest expression to his feelings. 

It was before the formal declaration of 
peace, but the war was everywhere felt to be 
substantially closed. 


254 


PETER AND POLLY. 


Dr. Austin was anxious to be back in his 
home, but he had been detained, and would 
not ask for his discharge so long as he could 
be of any service ; and Polly, who had come to 
meet him in the old home where they had 
parted, was growing sick with hope deferred. 
But this evening, as she stood in her stiff bro- 
cade, and fastened a rose on her bosom, and 
drew on her long gloves, she was full of atipi- 
pation, for before night she expected to see 
Peter. 

Poor Peter ! who had left her four years 
before, and who had now a soldier’s record, 
made up of hard, but not brilliant experiences, 
of fatiguing marches, and wearisome life'* in 
the cold winter huts, and of dull days spent in 
Saratoga, where his regiment was lately quar- 
tered ; although there, having time, he had 
obtained books, and reviewed his old studies, 
intending, t'hough later in life than he had 
hoped, to enter college immediately on his re- 
turn home. A considerable number of other. 


PETER AND POLLY. 


255 


soldiers were coming back to New England 
at the same time ; some who had been his 
near comrades, others belonging to different 
New Hampshire and Massachusetts regi- 
ments. Among them were persons well 
known in the community ; and as the general 
feeling of patriotic joy was constantly showing 
itself in public receptions, it was arranged to 
have a social gathering at the village tavern, 
with music and speeches ; a great supper of 
roast geese and turkeys, and a dance, besides, 
to welcome them. 

It was a regret to Polly that she was com- 
pelled to meet Peter for the first time in the 
company of others. But enough of her old 
love of gayety and excitement remained to 
make her take great delight in rendering her 
toilet as becoming as possible. 

“ Peter shall not be ashamed of me,” she 
resolved, as she arranged a little love-lock 
on her temple ; “ nor think I seem like a mere 
country wool-picker,” she thought, as she fas- 


256 


PETER AND POLLY. 


tened her handsome lace tucker ; “ nor fancy 
that Mrs. Job Hart taught me to courtesy,” 
she said, and practised bending and bowing 
before the glass, well pleased that she did not 
make an unattractive picture in it. 

Polly’s cheeks were all aglow when she 
reached the gathering-place with Dr. Merrick, 
a queer old-bachelor friend of her father’s, 
who had been kind enough, for once, to give 
up his unsocial ways and offer her his escort. 

Every eye in the room was turned toward 
the door, waiting for the soldiers, who were to 
enter in a body. 

At last the orchestra, which consisted of 
three men with fiddles and three with flutes, 
struck up a merry tune, and two and two the 
heroes of the day came marching in. Freshly 
shaven, nicely powdered, in handsome uni- 
forms, and with erect, soldierly bearing, they 
seemed to Polly, grown accustomed to the 
rough farmers that she had been wont to see, 
almost like beings from another sphere. 


PETER AND POLLY. 


257 


What ! was that handsome young cap- 
tain with the clear blue eye really Peter? 
He seemed too exalted a personage to be 
her brother ! She longed to fly to him, and 
yet she felt afraid. He looked all around 
the room, and then his gaze fixed on her. 
“ What ! ” thought he, “ is that fair young lady 
with such fine carriage and splendid dress 
really my own little Polly, whom I left so 
slight and young and shy ! It must be she, 
and yet how can it be?” And then he met 
her eyes, just as they used to look, clear and 
soft and tender, and with the quick impatient 
tears gathering in them, and he hurried across 
the room. “Polly!” he said, and bent down 
and kissed her, and it was the proudest mo- 
ment in all her life ; and then he led her into 
a quiet corner decked all around with ever- 
green wreaths until it was a bower ; and they 
sat down together ; and they both had so much 
to say that neither of them knew where to 
begin. “ O, I am so glad to see you, Peter ! ” 


258 


PETER AND POLLY. 


Polly kept repeating. “ And I am so glad to 
be back, Polly!” was Peters as frequent reply ; 
and Polly kept asking questions, and inter- 
rupting their replies by putting others, or by 
breaking in to say something that she felt she 
could not keep to herself a moment longer ; 
and Peter looked down on his little twin sister, 
and said, “ Well, Polly, you are twice as pretty 
and as fine as I ever expected to see you ! ” 
which made Polly’s cheeks burn redder, and 
her eyes grow brighter, than ever before. It 
was no time for Peter to repeat the long story 
of his army life, with the music sounding and 
the hum of talk all around them ; but their 
thoughts naturally went back to the friends 
they had left in New Hampshire. “ Cousin 
Keziah is well and as active as ever,” said 
Polly ; “ and Parson Piper is sorely cast down 
by the death of his wife ; and Uncle Abel and 
Aunt Nancy have grown so old, worrying 
about their money, that they never will be 
able to enjoy their property ; though, with the 


PETER AND POLLY. 


259 


paper currency he has bought great tracts of 
land, which now, it is thought, will increase 
in value till he will be richer than ever ; and 
Price Hodgkins has taken Uncle Abel’s store, 
and — ” 

“ And Brown Beck ! ” broke in Peter. “ Is 
n’t it strange ? — I was talking one day with 
a man from New Hampshire who was in my 
company, and I found he had once been a 
clerk in Uncle Abel’s store, and had boarded 
in the family, and of course seen Beck there, 
and he said that once he was in the camp of a 
regiment, near by, and that she came round 
to tell fortunes ; she was very poor, and hag- 
gard-looking, and she had two dirty children 
clinging to her, and a drunken fellow, that 
seemed to be her husband, was hanging about, 
to whom she gave the money that she earned ; 
and she looked as though she was paying dear 
for all her misdeeds ; though as for running 
away on Independence day, if she stole her 
freedom, then she only took her own.” 


26 o 


PETER AND POLLY. 


“ And — O Peter ! ” said Polly, “ there is 
one thing I want to ask ; have you ever heard 
a word from Rob, — poor, brave Rob ? ” 

“ It is not very probable that I should,” said 
Peter, smiling, and just then he started up. 
“ Polly,” he said, “ I must leave you for a little 
while. Captain Stevens’s sister I see here. 
I met her in Boston with her brother when I 
stopped at his house on my way here, and I 
must go and pay her my compliments.” 

“ O yes, go ! ” said Polly, with a twinge of 
jealousy, and a searching glance at the fine 
city-girl in question, a tall sylph in spotless 
white, with a deep border of finest lace around 
the bottom of her dress. 

“ I will introduce you to her presently, but 
first, I want to make you acquainted with a 
young major who came with us. He is one 
who is worthy of the name of soldier. He 
entered the army when he was but a boy, just 
before the battle of Bennington, but he was as 
brave as an old hero ; unused to everything as 


PETER AND POLLY. 


26l 


he was, he fought desperately, and was the 
first to force through the breastwork, that en- 
abled them to take the brass cannon. He 
was, for his bravery, advanced at once, and 
since then glory has seemed to follow him. - 
He fought with honor at Stillwater, carried off 
laurels from scorching Monmouth, and when 
Cornwallis surrendered he was there.” 

“ Who is he ? What is his name ? ” asked 
Polly. But Peter did not answer; he only 
walked away ; and soon Polly saw him return- 
ing, with the fair Miss Stevens on his arm, 
and by his side a young officer, straight and 
slender, and with such piercing dark eyes as 
Polly had seen in only one before. 

She gave him a long look, and then held 
out both her hands. “ Peter cannot deceive 
me,” she said ; “you can only be yourself, and 
I ’m so glad to see you, Rob.” And then she 
checked herself, and blushed, remembering 
that her childish favoritism for poor Rob 
would be unmaidenly forwardness if shown 


262 


PETER AND POLLY. 


toward the gallant young officer who was the 
toast of the day. 

But Rob grasped her hands eagerly in his, 
and said, “ Indeed, Miss Polly, it is worth all 
I have been through to hear you say that.” 
And then he sat down beside her in the ever- 
green bower, and what went on around them 
they neither heard nor saw ; for Rob had so 
many questions to ask about Miss Keziah and 
Judith and Parson Piper and even Master Dow, 
who had died just after Cornwallis’s surrender, 
which he celebrated by drinking himself to 
death, — though how he was able to get spirit 
enough to do so was a marvel, when liquors were 
at such a price, — and about Mr. Burbean, who 
still thought “ things looked dark,” and that, 
“ even if we were a conquering ftation, we 
should find that our troubles were not all 
ended ” ; and Polly’s ready tongue ran its fast- 
est. And then she was surprised to find she 
could be a good listener, for she quite held her 
breath while Rob told how, on the morning that 


PETER AND POLLY. 


263 


she had bidden him “ farewell,” he had taken 
his course through the woods and over the 
fields, pushing his way circuitously till he 
had reached Charlestown on the Connecticut 
River, an old frontier fort, and now the soldiers 
rendezvous. 

Then he went on to tell of perils in battle 
and daring encounters ; but all his tales, Polly 
noticed, were of the bravery of others and 
never of his own ; and, last of all, he took out, 
carefully wrapped in paper, the very handker- 
chief she had given him as a parting keepsake, 
and which, he told her, he had carried with 
him ever since ; and Polly blushed and smiled, 
and thought it was very charming and roman- 
tic, like a beautiful chapter in a novel, and this 
time she was the heroine herself ; and poor Dr. 
Merrick, who, out of friendship for her father, 
had taken such pains to escort her to the gath- 
ering, felt himself decidedly unneeded, and was 
obliged to seek consolation in the welcoming 
smiles of a stout widow who had long and 


264 


PETER AND POLLY. 


vainly tried to make his acquaintance ; and 
Polly forgot to be jealous, though Peter, in en- 
tertaining the fair Miss Stevens, seemed to 
have quite lost the thought that it was the 
first evening of his return, and that it was long 
years since he and his twin sister had been to- 
gether before. 




CHAPTER XIII. 

I T was the lovely summer-time when Polly 
was married, three years after Peters re- 
turn. 

The flax-fields, all in bloom, were blue as 
the sky, and the sky was without a cloud. 
The birds were all singing together ; and the 
wind, that came in through the open window, 
was heavy-laden with the odor of flowers ; while 
in the fireplace, where in winter the red blaze 
leaped and crackled as if in derision of the 
wild wind roaring without, now, in the white 
hearth-vase, glowed the sweet summer flame of 
full-blown roses, and clove-scented pinks, and 
fluttering sweet-peas, Judith’s flowers, from 
the little bed under the window ; for Polly had 


266 


PETER AND POLLY. 


determined that her weddirig, as Cousin Ke- 
ziah had wished, should take place in her old 
New Hampshire home, where Rob and she, in 
their simple childish way, first learned to know 
and to care for each other. 

For Rob was the bridegroom, made splendid 
for the occasion by a bright blue coat, white 
waistcoat, buff breeches, and white silk stock- 
ings, with gold buckles at the knee ; and 
Polly was a charming little bride, and, spite 
the solemnity of the occasion, could not help 
being conscious that her wedding-gown, every 
stitch of which she had made herself, was the 
daintiest little white cloud of a dress that ever 
woman wore, and that her white satin shoes, 
with their glittering paste ornaments, were 
pretty and small enough for her to put on if 
she had been Cinderella, and were to marry a 
prince. 

But, if not a prince, Rob was now exceed- 
ingly “ well to do ” in the world, enough so 
even to satisfy Aunt Nancy ; for, after his sue- 


PETER AND POLLY. 


267 


cess in the army, some of his rich relations, 
who had turned a cold shoulder on his father 
in the days of his poverty, had taken pains to 
seek him out, and as a curmudgeonly old un- 
cle, making his will from the caprice of the mo- 
ment, had left him all his property, and died 
soon after, Rob was able to seek Polly with no 
empty hand. 

Dr. Austin was there, looking pale and thin, 
for the rough life and exposure he had endured 
in the army had told upon his health ; yet 
still he seemed stronger, Polly thought, than 
he had done in a long time. Peter and the fair 
Miss Stevens stood up with the happy couple. 
Peter was almost a learned man already ; the 
college honors he had always coveted were 
now in his grasp, and he was anticipating 
many hours of quiet study and happy opportu- 
nities of usefulness in a minister’s life, when the 
pretty bridemaid would be his bride instead. 

As for Parson Piper, he made the marriage- 
prayer a thanksgiving for national blessings, 


268 


PETER AND POLLY. 


and a tribute of praise for victory in arms ; for 
Dr. Austin and Rob and Peter were so closely 
linked in his mind with the cause of free- 
dom, that it was first in his thoughts whenever 
he saw one of them. But he did remember to 
return thanks for the marriage relation as the 
holiest and sweetest on earth, and Miss Keziah 
blushed, for, when September should come, she 
knew the parsonage would be her home, and 
that the little Pipers would call her “ mother.” 

After the prayer everybody kissed .the bride ; 
and Polly’s eyes filled with grateful tears in 
answer to the kind wishes breathed all around 
her, and her heart throbbed with thankfulness 
for the past, while she looked forward with 
cheerful trust to what was then the fair un- 
certain future, and what is now the dim, long- 
buried past ; 

V 

“ For this, all this, was in the olden 
Time, long ago.” 


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